As in football, what matters is the ball in the net: whoever scores the most goals wins. Each team has six players – three attackers, two defenders and the goalkeeper – and the game is divided into three halves of 20 minutes. All players use ice skates (with a blade instead of wheels) and a stick known as a stick, with which they control, launch and send the puck to the goal – a little disk that has the same function as the ball in football. Anyone who has ever seen an ice hockey game will have noticed that it’s a rough game: only really heavy shoves are considered fouls. Despite this, in countries where the sport is more popular – such as Canada, the United States, Finland and the Czech Republic – there are children’s and women’s leagues. The NHL (National Hockey League) is the NBA of hockey: it is the most famous and competitive league on the planet, it takes place in the United States, distributes the best salaries, but has many more foreigners, since in hockey the Americans are not unbeatable like in basketball.
ABSENCES
Although many bumps are considered normal, there are many types of faults. The most common is the so-called board checking: a player presses another against one of the walls of the rink violently. Fouls may be punished with a suspension of 2, 5 or 10 minutes. Check out other irregular bids in the table below.
ICING
Infraction scored when a player located behind the center line of the court throws the puck through the opponent’s end line. If the shot hits the goal (even if the goalkeeper saves it) or hits any player in the way, the match continues as normal. The icing is also canceled if the first person to touch the puck past the end line is an attacker.
OFF-SIDE
A player is offside when the puck crosses two court lines (either the center or the blue ones) before reaching his stick. Therefore, players usually keep little distance between each other. Like icing and fouls, impediment is punished with a face-off in the offending team’s defense field.
FACE OFF
Whenever the match is interrupted, it is restarted with a face-off – which can be charged at nine points from the rink. Two players (one from each team, of course) face each other with the tip of the stick resting on the ground. The referee throws the puck between them and play resumes as soon as it hits the ground.
Holding
Grab with hands
tripping
Crawl using the stick
Hooking
Use the stick as a hook
cross checking
Barring the passage using the stick