Ice hockey
Ice hockey or simply known as hockey in North America and parts of Europe, 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. The two opposing teams score by using their ice hockey sticks to control and advance a vulcanized rubber hockey puck, and then shooting it into the net of the other team, each goal is worth one point. The team with the highest score after an hour of gameplay 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 modern sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada, most notably in Montreal, where the first indoor game was played on March 3, 1875. It draws influence from shinty which originated in Scotland, as well as field hockey which originated in England. Some characteristics of ice hockey, such as the length of the ice rink and the use of a puck, have been retained to this day. Amateur ice hockey leagues began in the 1880s, and professional ice hockey originated around 1900. The Stanley Cup, emblematic of ice hockey club supremacy, was initially commissioned in 1892 as the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup" and was first awarded in 1893 to recognise the Canadian amateur champion and later became the championship trophy of the National Hockey League. In the early 1900s, the Canadian rules were adopted by the, in Paris, France, the precursor to the International Ice Hockey Federation. The sport was played for the first time at the Olympics during the 1920 Summer Games—today it is a mainstay at the Winter Olympics. In 1994, ice hockey was officially recognized as Canada's national winter sport.
While women also played the game during its early formative years, it was not until the mid-1980s when organizers began to officially remove body checking from female ice hockey that it began to gain wider popularity, which by then had spread to Europe and a variety of other countries. The IIHF Women's World Championship was held in 1990, and women's play was introduced into the Olympics in 1998.
History
Ice hockey is believed to have evolved from simple stick and ball games played in the 18th and 19th centuries in Britain, Ireland, and elsewhere, primarily bandy, hurling, and shinty. The North American sport of lacrosse, derived from tribal Native American games, was also influential. The former games were brought to North America and several similar winter games using informal rules developed, such as shinny and ice polo, but later were absorbed into a new organized game with codified rules which today is ice hockey.Game
While the general characteristics of the game remain constant, the exact rules depend on the particular code of play being used. The two most important codes are those of the IIHF and the NHL. Both of these codes, and others, originated from Canadian rules of ice hockey of the early 20th century.Ice hockey is played on a hockey rink. During normal play, there are six players on ice skates on the ice per side, one of them being the goaltender. The objective of the game is to score goals by shooting a hard vulcanized rubber disc, the puck, into the opponent's goal net at the opposite end of the rink. The players use their sticks to pass or shoot the puck.
With certain restrictions, players may redirect the puck with any part of their body. Players may not hold the puck in their hand and are prohibited from using their hands to pass the puck to their teammates unless they are in the defensive zone. Players can knock a puck out of the air with their hands to themselves. Players are prohibited from kicking the puck into the opponent's goal, though unintentional redirections off their body or equipment, including skates, are permitted. Players may not intentionally bat the puck into the net with their hands or any part of their body.
Hockey is an off-side game, meaning that forward passes are allowed, unlike in rugby. Before the 1930s, hockey was an on-side game, meaning that only backward passes were allowed. Those rules emphasized individual stick-handling to drive the puck forward. With the arrival of offside rules, the forward pass transformed hockey into a true team sport, where individual performance diminished in importance relative to team play, which could now be coordinated over the entire surface of the ice as opposed to merely rearward players.
File:Military appreciation night South Carolina Stingrays.jpg|thumb|Players from the South Carolina Stingrays perform a line change. A line change is a substitution of an entire line at once.
The six players on each team are typically divided into three forwards, two defencemen, and one goaltender. The term skaters typically applies to all players except goaltenders. The forward positions consist of a centre and two wingers: a left wing and a right wing. Forwards often play together as units or lines, with the same three forwards always playing together. The defencemen usually stay together as a pair generally divided between left and right. Left and right side wingers or defencemen are generally positioned on the side on which they carry their stick. A substitution of an entire unit at once is called a line change. Teams typically employ alternate sets of forward lines and defensive pairings when short-handed or on a power play. The goaltender stands in a, usually blue, semi-circle called the crease in the defensive zone keeping pucks out of the goal. Substitutions are permitted at any time during the game, although during a stoppage of play the home team is permitted the final change. When players are substituted during play, it is called changing on the fly. An NHL rule added in the 2005–06 season prevents a team from making any player substitutions after they ice the puck.
The boards surrounding the ice help keep the puck in play and they can also be used as tools to play the puck. Players are permitted to bodycheck opponents into the boards to stop progress. The referees, linesmen and the outsides of the goal are "in play" and do not stop the game when the puck or players either bounce into or collide with them. Play can be stopped if the goal is knocked out of position. Play often proceeds for minutes without interruption. After a stoppage, play is restarted with a faceoff. Two players face each other and an official drops the puck to the ice, where the two players attempt to gain control of the puck. Markings on the ice indicate the locations for the faceoff and guide the positioning of players.
Three major rules of play in ice hockey limit the movement of the puck: offside, icing, and the puck going out of play.
- A player is offside if he enters his opponent's zone before the puck itself.
- Under many situations, a player may not "ice the puck", which means shooting the puck all the way across both the centre line and the opponent's goal line.
- The puck goes out of play whenever it goes past the perimeter of the ice rink and a stoppage of play is called by the officials using whistles. It does not matter if the puck comes back onto the ice surface from outside of the rink, because the puck is considered dead once it leaves the perimeter of the rink. The referee may also blow the whistle for a stoppage in play if the puck is jammed along the boards when two or more players are battling for the puck for a long time, or if the puck is stuck on the back of any of the two nets for a period of time.
Periods and overtime
A professional ice hockey game consists of three periods of twenty minutes, the clock running only when the puck is in play. There is a rest period between the three periods. The teams change ends after each period of play, including overtime. Recreational leagues and children's leagues often play shorter games, generally with three shorter periods of play.If a tie occurs in tournament play, as well as in the NHL playoffs, North Americans favour sudden death overtime, in which the teams continue to play twenty-minute periods until a goal is scored. Up until the 1999–2000 season, regular-season NHL games were settled with a single five-minute sudden death period with five players per side, with both teams awarded one point in the standings in the event of a tie. With a goal, the winning team would be awarded two points and the losing team none. The total elapsed time from when the puck first drops, is about 2 hours and 20 minutes for a 60-minute game.
From the 1999–2000 until the 2003–04 seasons, the National Hockey League decided ties by playing a single five-minute sudden-death overtime period with each team having four skaters per side. In the event of a tie, each team would still receive one point in the standings but in the event of a victory the winning team would be awarded two points in the standings and the losing team one point. The idea was to discourage teams from playing for a tie, since previously some teams might have preferred a tie and 1 point to risking a loss and zero points. The exception to this rule is if a team opts to pull their goalie in exchange for an extra skater during overtime and is subsequently scored upon, in which case the losing team receives no points for the overtime loss. Since the 2015–16 season, the single five-minute sudden-death overtime session involves three skaters on each side. Since three skaters must always be on the ice in an NHL game, the consequences of penalties are slightly different from those during regulation play; any penalty during overtime that would result in a team losing a skater during regulation instead causes the other side to add a skater. Once the penalized team's penalty ends, the penalized skater exits the penalty box and the teams continue at 4-on-4 until the next stoppage of play, at which point the teams return to three skaters per side.
International play and several North American professional leagues, including the NHL, now use an overtime period identical to that from 1999–2000 to 2003–04 followed by a penalty shootout. If the score remains tied after an extra overtime period, the subsequent shootout consists of three players from each team taking penalty shots. After these six total shots, the team with the most goals is awarded the victory. If the score is still tied, the shootout then proceeds to sudden death. Regardless of the number of goals scored by either team during the shootout, the final score recorded will award the winning team one more goal than the score at the end of regulation time. In the NHL if a game is decided in overtime or by a shootout the winning team is awarded two points in the standings and the losing team is awarded one point. Ties no longer occur in the NHL.
Overtime in the NHL playoffs differs from the regular season. In the playoffs there are no shootouts. If a game is tied after regulation, then a 20-minute period of 5-on-5 sudden-death overtime will be added. If the game is still tied after the overtime, another period is added until a team scores, which wins the match. Since 2019, the IIHF World Championships and the gold medal game in the Olympics use the same format, but in a 3-on-3 format.