Credit where Credit is Due

There are a ton of claims to the origins of hockey:

Windsor Nova Scotia says "Windsor maintains a claim as the birthplace of hockey, based upon a reference (in a novel by Thomas Haliburton) of boys from King's Collegiate School playing "hurley", on the frozen waters of Long Pond adjacent to the school's campus during the early 19th century

Wikipedia credits Quebec: "The contemporary sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada, most notably in Montreal, where the first indoor game was played on March 3, 1875.

Wikipedia also talks about similar games: Stick-and-ball games date back to pre-Christian times. In Europe, these games included the Irish game of hurling, the closely related Scottish game of shinty and versions of field hockey (including bandy ball, played in England). IJscolf, a game resembling colf on an ice-covered surface, was popular in the Low Countries between the Middle Ages and the Dutch Golden Age. It was played with a wooden curved bat (called a colf or kolf), a wooden or leather ball and two poles (or nearby landmarks), with the objective to hit the chosen point using the fewest strokes. A similar game (knattleikr) had been played for a thousand years or more by the Scandinavian peoples, as documented in the Icelandic sagas.

I happened on this remarkable 1558 etching by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Skating before the St. George's Gate, Antwerp

Lots going on.  Someone fell thru the ice in the upper left, a scene in the upper right with someone playing Iscolf:

and maybe a hockeyish game in progress behind him where someone has fallen.

Most remarkable is the person in the sixteenth century version of a sledge.  Clearly he/she is sitting, one foot out front, and propelling with sharp poles.  There is another in the first detail, just to the left of  the tree.

Again, Wikipedia, this time wrong by 400 years!

"Sledge hockey  is an adaptation of ice hockey designed for players who have a physical disability. Invented in the early 1960s at a rehabilitation centre in Stockholm, and played under similar rules to standard ice hockey, players are seated on sleds and use special hockey sticks with metal "teeth" on the tips of their handles to navigate the ice."