Western Hockey League
sports league, USA and Canada
The Western Hockey League (WHL) is a junior ice hockey league based in Western Canada and the Northwestern United States. The WHL is one of three leagues that constitutes the Canadian Hockey League (CHL) as the highest level of junior hockey in Canada, alongside the Ontario Hockey League and Quebec Maritimes Junior Hockey League. Teams play for the Ed Chynoweth Cup, with the winner moving on to play for the Memorial Cup, Canada's national junior championship. WHL teams have won the Memorial Cup 19 times. The WHL is composed of 23 teams divided into two conferences of two divisions, each. The Eastern Conference comprises 11 teams from Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta, while the Western Conference comprises 12 teams from British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon. The league will expand to 24 teams by 2027 with the addition of a team in Chilliwack, British Columbia.
The league was founded in 1966 as the Canadian Major Junior Hockey League (CMJHL), with seven teams in Saskatchewan and Alberta. For its 1967 season, the league was renamed the Western Canada Junior Hockey League (WCJHL). From 1968, the league was renamed the Western Canada Hockey League (WCHL), and finally the Western Hockey League from 1978 after the admission of American-based teams to the league.
“Western Hockey League” enters the record as sports league, USA and Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Western, Hockey and League can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q849096. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2027, 1966, 1967 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “Western Hockey League” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.