During the brief existence of The Maritime Professional Hockey Association this league/leagues awarded 3 different championship trophies.
The first trophy and the most famous of the three was the Starr trophy. The Starr trophy was donated by the Starr Skate Manufacturing Company based in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia in 1897. It was originally awarded the best amateur team in the Maritimes. During the initial season of the Maritime League this trophy was presented to its championship team the Moncton Victorias. Since Moncton had won the trophy as an amateur team the previous two seasons they followed the tradition of the time and declared Moncton to be the rightful owners of the Starr Trophy and it was taking out of circulation.
The second trophy award to the champion of the Maritime Professional League was the Crosby Cup. This trophy was donated by former Halifax mayor A.B. Crosby. A newspaper description of the time declared: The trophy cup which is of silver stands thirty seven inches in height is of very handsome design with artistic ornamentation. It is surmounted by the figured player playing a puck with the hockey. On the bowl is the inscription The A. B. Crosby Cup, presented by A.B. Crosby, Esq., to the M. P. H. A. for professional hockey, to be won three times before it is the property of any one club. Below the inscription is a pair of crossed hockey sticks with a wreath of laurel about the handles and between the stick blades a skate and a puck. The cup is flanked on either side by a silver pedestal on which is the figure of a hockeyist at play. The whole trophy stands on a heavy ebony base.
The third trophy was the Douglas trophy named for John C. Douglas, a future Canadian Member of Parliment who donated the trophy to the professional league to replace the Crosby Cup. When the Maritime Professional Hockey Association collapsed and was replaced by the Eastern Professional Hockey League the Crosby Cup was not granted to the newly formed league. The Douglas Trophy was never presented to a professional team since the league dissolved before a champion was crowned.
on the East River had a capacity of two thousand spectators. The game took place nearly a week after the original start date being postponed due to warm temperatures and poor ice. From all accounts the first game of the Maritime Professional league was a great success. The New Glasgow Standard reported that the “large arena was packed with an audience anticipating the more strenuous kind of hockey and were not disappointed”. The Standard went on to proclaim that “no finer article of hockey was ever seen in the Province.”