Los Angeles, Phoenix and Florida may seem like odd places to host hockey teams today when their temperatures don't even drop low enough to sustain a natural rink in the winter time. But warm-weather hockey used to exist during the Olympic Games.
Way back in 1920, Olympic ice hockey began, but not in the cold winter months we're used to now. The event got its start in Antwerp, Belgium in the Summer Olympics because the Winter Games had not yet existed, so hockey players and figure skaters were invited to compete during the warmest time of the year.
What is today know as the International Ice Hockey Federation had hosted European hockey championships, but there had yet to be a world-wide competition prior to the 1920 Olympics. That year, the United States, Canada, Belgium, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Czechoslovakia battled for the first-ever gold medal in hockey. Canada won the gold, the United States earned silver and Czechoslovakia took the bronze.
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Ice hockey transferred permanently to the Winter Games in 1924.