Jack Gibson

John L. "Jack" Gibson (September 10, 1880 - October 7, 1955) was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a builder in 1976.

Gibson was born in Berlin, Ontario, which later became Kitchener. As a youth, he excelled in academics and athletics, playing a number of sports well. Gibson received an offer to play in the developmental system of Everton Football Club in Great Britain. He considered the move, but decided to stay in North America to continue his studies.

Gibson was a gifted hockey player who played throughout Ontario and contributed to the Berlin, Ontario provincial intermediate championship team in 1897. Gibson played on a team expelled from the Ontario Hockey Association in 1898 for paying some of its players.

He attended the University of Michigan to pursue a Bachelor of Science. He was also a member of the U of M football team. Later, he moved to the University of Detroit Dental School.

After graduation, he moved to the northern Michigan community of Houghton to set up a dental practice. Still a gifted hockey player, he recruited other talented individuals and established the Portage Lake team in 1902-03. He captained the squad and was its leading scorer.

After defeating the Montreal Wanderers in 2 exhibition contests in the 1903 - 1904 season in front of 5,000 fans at the Houghton Amphidrome, it became obvious to Gibson that Northern Michigan was a hockey hotbed and could sustain a league and the International Professional Hockey League, the first professional hockey league in the world, opened for business in 1904.

Gibson attracted the likes of Hod and Bruce Stuart, Riley Hern, and Cyclone Taylor to play in the league. In addition to Houghton Portage Lakes, the Calumet Miners, Sault Ste. Marie Indians, the Pittsburgh Pro Hockey Club and the Canadian Soo team rounded out the league. The league folded after only three years when professional hockey became a reality in Canada in 1907 and many of the star players returned home. 15 of the 97 players who played in the IPHL from 1904 to 1907, including Gibson, are members of the Hockey Hall of Fame.

After practicing dentistry and refereeing local games in Houghton for a few years, Gibson also returned to Canada and set up a dental practice in Calgary, Alberta, where he resided until he died in 1955.

Beginning in 1939, a trophy, named the Gibson Cup, was awarded to the champion of the Michigan-Ontario Pro Hockey League. Today, the Gibson Cup is given to the winner of an annual challenge series between the Portage Lake Pioneers and the Calumet Wolverines. The Gibson Cup is the third-oldest hockey cup in North America, behind only the Stanley Cup (1893) and the MacNaughton Cup (1913). The MacNaughton Cup goes to the regular-season champion of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association.