With only a couple of more weeks of playoff games and then the Super Bowl, you might think that we were finally reaching a time of year when there is only one professional sport—basketball—to watch. But no, the professional hockey season is in full swing.
Think of hockey as a hybrid – it’s fast-paced like basketball, there’s legal hitting like football, and the playoffs are best of multiple games like baseball. Oh yeah, sometimes the hitting results in major brawls on the ice, but that’s another story.
Hockey is played on a 200’ by 85’ ice rink. The rink has three zones, a neutral zone in the middle, and defending and attacking zones (gotta love the war analogies here) at each end.
There are six players on a team, one goalie, three forwards, two defensemen. A game is made up of three 20-minute periods, and it starts with a face-off, similar to a jump ball in basketball.
The object of the game is to score more goals than your opponent. Each goal is one point.
The game is played with a puck that’s made of rubber, and is frozen before it’s used so it doesn’t bounce. When hit hard, the puck can move at 100 miles per hour. Hockey sticks are wooden, and there are regulations regarding their size. The rules say players can’t carry their sticks above the shoulders of their opponents.
Players are only allowed to hit—body check—the guy with the puck using their shoulders, hips, or torso.
Live play is allowed behind the goal, though the offensive player with the puck is not allowed in the crease, the 8’ by 4’ area right in front of the goal. The goalie’s job is to “save” the puck from getting past him into the goal. So when you hear an announcer say that so and so has 27 saves, they’re talking about the goalie. When you hear them say so and so had a hat trick that means that player scored three or more goals in a single game.
When a penalty is called, a player has to leave the game and sit in the penalty box for a specific amount of time. This creates a power play situation – when one team has an advantage because they have one more man on the ice.
Common infractions include offsides (player crosses blue line before the puck), and icing (shooting puck across center red line past opposing red goalie line).
Regular season hockey games no longer end in ties. If a game is tied after five minutes of overtime, a shoot-out occurs. Each team names three shooters who attempt to score goals. If the game remains tied after these three shooters are done, teams continue shooting in “sudden death” mode. The game cannot end until each team has taken the same number of shots. This rule, which took effect in the NHL in 2005, remains controversial.
Professional hockey has been played in this country since 1924, and is governed by the National Hockey League. The Stanley Cup is the annual championship analogous to the Super Bowl.
Editor’s Note: If you haven’t seen the Paul Newman classic Slap Shot, please, please do:
