The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League, which later became the first ice hockey league to openly trade and hire players, began play at Pittsburgh's Schenley Park Casino.

The Western Pennsylvania Hockey League (WPHL) was an originally amateur and later professional ice hockey league founded in 1896 and existing through 1909. Based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the league became the pre-eminent ice hockey league in the United States. It was the first league to openly hire and trade players.

Ice hockey is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. Two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance, and shoot a vulcanized rubber hockey puck into the other team's net. Each goal is worth one point. The team with the highest score after an hour of playing time is declared the winner; ties are broken in overtime or a shootout. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, including a goaltender. It is a full contact game and one of the more physically demanding team sports.

The 1896–97 WPHL season was the first season of championship hockey of Pittsburgh's Western Pennsylvania Hockey League. The season opened on November 17, 1896, and was well underway when brought to an end by the destruction of fire of the league's facility, the Schenley Park Casino ice rink on December 17, 1896.

Pittsburgh is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. The city is located in southwestern Pennsylvania at the confluence of the Allegheny River and Monongahela River, which combine to form the Ohio River. It is the second-most populous city in Pennsylvania with a population of 302,971 at the 2020 census, while the Pittsburgh metropolitan area at over 2.43 million residents is the largest metropolitan area in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia, the second-largest in Pennsylvania, and 28th-largest in the U.S. The greater Pittsburgh–Weirton–Steubenville combined statistical area includes parts of Ohio and West Virginia.