Sturminator
Love is a duel
Bowie's generation was likely the first one that spent any time playing organized hockey as children, and they probably began in high school. Earlier generations seemed to coalesce around university-level teams like the one at McGill University, which is not surprising as hockey was brand new as an organized sport and universities are often the purveyors of what's new.
Hockey doesn't seem to have moved indoors regularly until the forming of the CAHL. Before that, it was played strictly outdoors with sticks for goalposts (the referee had to estimate the height of an imaginary crossbar on high shots), there were obviously no boards and there was no standard rink size. Pucks were often made out of rubber balls cut in half. It was literally pond hockey. I got it wrong on Bowie's generation earlier; his was the first that competed in indoor arenas. So yeah...I think calling everything before the formation of the CAHL "primitive" is right on.
The CAHL, itself, and the ECAHA that followed it were still definitely hockey in its embryonic state. The seven man game out east went by the wayside as soon as the NHA was formed (just after the end of Bowie's career). It would be another decade after Bowie's retirement before the second round of major rules changes was implemented - specifically power plays, the existence of zones on the ice (bluelines and offsides), and forward passing in the neutral zone. What Bowie played wasn't exactly pond hockey, but it was something much more akin to rugby on skates than what we would recognize as hockey today.
The Nighbor generation grew up in a time when hockey was already a very popular sport in Canada, and spent the greater part of their careers playing under a rules system which differed from modern rules only in that it wasn't until 1927 that forward passing was allowed in all zones. The differences between the generations in terms of talent pool and how the sport was played appear very large, yes.
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