Hockey in Toronto isn't all about the NHL. Kids in Toronto have been playing Canada's game on frozen ponds and home-made rinks for more than a century.

These pictures, taken from around 1910 to the mid 1960s show school, city park, and recreation centre teams, usually in the east end, and feature young players across a range of ages. Some have uniforms, others play in plain clothes with cricket pads and gloves as their only measure of protection against slapped pucks.

One picture captures the touring "Fast Ojibway Indians" and the "Great Cree Indians" teams, who visited Toronto in 1928 during a 2,200-mile cross-country motor coach tour.

From the professional world, there's the Toronto Arenas a short-lived Stanley Cup-winning precursor to the Toronto St. Patricks, who became the Maple Leafs in the 1920s, and some images of the Army Daggers and Royal Canadian Air Force teams from the 1940s.

Those squads feature players whose wonderful names could only be from the wartime period, who all sound like friends of your grandparents: Buddy Glover, Buck Jones, Lloyd Finkbeiner, Herb Mortimer.

The handful of action shots capture the scrape and clatter of pick-up games at Christie Pits Park (when there still were pits,) Riverdale Park, and the University of Toronto campus.

You can almost feel the pinch of the crisp winter air. Not long now.

Hockey at Christie Pits

Adam Beck - playground champions

Earl Grey school

East Riverdale boys

East Riverdale girls

Ice rinks at Riverdale Park with the General Steel Wares Building in the background

Essex playground team

Hodgson's championship team

Hughes

Keele school juvenile champions

University of Toronto players

McCormick

Moss Park

A match outside the St. Clair car barn

North Toronto

Osler playground

The Royal Canadian Air Force team celebrates a win

Strathcona

TTC's Danforth barns team

Wilkinson

Women's hockey

Buddy Davis of the Army Daggers

Buddy Glover from the Daggers

The Toronto Arenas

The Toronto St. Patricks

Toronto Maple Leafs

Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.

Images: City of Toronto Archives