Lord Hubbard's
Table Hockey Tournament

 Next Tournament: 23 August, 2008
 More info : (801) 660-LEAF.
or call : (801) 731-2812

LHT Beginnings

So who exactly is Lord Hubbard?  And how did this silly game turn into a tournament that draws competitors from all ends of the earth?  All of these questions and more will be answered on this page.  This is the history of Lord Hubbard’s Table Hockey Tournament.

For Christmas in 2004 a young lady living downtown Salt Lake City purchased a table hockey game for her husband.  The citizens of Salt Lake City and its surrounding areas had never seen such a contraption before, but they quickly realized why their neighbours to the north were so hopelessly addicted to the game.  The young lady knew a statistician who recorded all the data that came from each game and published it in the Official Book O’ Stats.  More and more people became interested in the highly competitive and entirely captivating sport (as it was now being termed a “sport”). 

The residence of the Table was 353 Hubbard Avenue in Salt Lake City .  Then one day the magic of it all was born.  Whether it was the young lady or her brother-in-law is not exactly clear.  But the brilliance was no doubt divine providence when someone suggested, “Hey… instead of Lord Stanley’s Cup we should have a tournament and award Lord Hubbard’s Cup”.  In that moment an idea was born from which we could never turn back.

So we began organizing the first Lord Hubbard’s Table Hockey Tournament.  It was to be held in one room of our basement apartment.  A website was created with little business cards for advertising.  It was turning into something really big.

We got trophies, had food, and really had a great time.  The first tournament took place on May 28th, 2005 and took a long time.  It was very exciting, but since we had to be quiet after about 10:30pm so as not to wake the neighbors there was definitely a damper placed on things.  Plus not many people were around for the awards ceremony because the tournament took 7 hours to complete.  At the end of the night Ryan Bruns was drinking from the Cup and everyone admitted that this was the most fun they’d had in a long time.

Under the model “bigger must be better” we used a clubhouse for the next tournament on November 12th, 2006.  This one had projectors, food, admission charges, video cameras, amplified sound, white gloves and another 7 hours.  Again, everyone who played loved it, but most had to leave before the tournament’s completion.  We had a real problem during our second tournament with people showing up very late or not at all.  The tournament was organized very well before the first game, but all of the changes that we had to make on the fly really led to confusion and frustration.  Preston Thomson used his home ice advantage to get his name on the Cup which currently resides with him in Idaho .

August 19th, 2007 and January 20, 2007 we finally decided to go for quality over quantity.  There was no round-robin play – only double elimination brackets.  These two tournaments are the models that we plan to use for future tournaments.  They were short (finished around dinner time) and since they're held at our house in Roy we don't have to worry about noise.

In January, 2007 we set a new record by having two real Canadians fly in for the tournament.  John & Jonathon Musters were absolutely spectacular and they set all sorts of rookie records, including scoring the only goal ever scored by a goalie!

LHT 5 will be held in the same format at the same place on Saturday, August 11th, 2007.  Once again we will have at least 2 real Canadians fly in for the tournament.