Kenora Thistles
Donated in 1892 by Lord Stanley of Preston, the Governor General of Canada, the Stanley Cup was originally awarded to the top amateur team in Canada, who would then accept challenges from the winners of other leagues. From its inception until 1912, the Cup was nearly always won by teams from Montreal, Winnipeg, and Ottawa. In 1903 Ottawa won the Cup, after finishing the season tied for first in the Canadian Amateur Hockey League with the Montreal Victorias. They played a two-game, total-goal series for the league championship. The Montreal Hockey Club, who had held the Cup, finished third in the league and therefore lost the right to keep it.
Pacific Coast Hockey Association
During the 1913–14 season, the PCHA and the NHA started to act together, coming to agreements to recognize each other's player suspensions and contracts, and instituting a controlled "draft" process to facilitate the transfer of players. In a further agreement, the champions of each league would face each other for the Stanley Cup. After the 1914 season, league champion Victoria came east to play the first "World Series of hockey" challenge series with the Toronto Blueshirts for the Stanley Cup. After the series, the Stanley Cup trustees came to agreement with the NHA and PCHA and the challenge era of the Stanley Cup came to an end. Yearly playoffs between the leagues would become the new manner of deciding the Stanley Cup champion. In the 1914–15 season, Vancouver defeated the Ottawa Senators in a best-of-five series to become the PCHA's first Stanley Cup champions.