Portal:Ice hockey
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Ice hockey, referred to simply as hockey in Canada, the United States, and most of Europe including Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Czech Republic, is a team sport played on ice. It is one of the world's fastest sports, with players on skates capable of going high speeds on natural or artificial ice surfaces. Though played on six continents, ice hockey, as a participatory and as a spectator sport, is most popular in nations in which the climate is sufficiently cold as to permit natural, long-term seasonal ice cover; Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia, Sweden, Russia, and the United States have dominated international competition, claiming 47 of the 48 gold and silver medals awarded in the men's and women's competitions at the Olympic Winter Games.
Ice hockey is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented at the highest level by the National Hockey League. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where seven of the 32 NHL franchises are based; Canadian-born players, though, outnumber American-born players in the NHL by a factor of three (30 per cent, additionally, come from outside North America).
The sport is played on a hockey rink. During normal play, there are six players, five positional players and one goaltender, per team on the ice at any time, each of whom is on ice skates. The objective of the game is to score goals by shooting a hard vulcanized rubber disc, the puck, into the opponent's goal net, with the goal nets placed at opposite ends of the rink. The players may control the puck using a long stick with a blade that is commonly curved at one end. Players may also generally redirect the puck with any part of their bodies, but the kicking of the puck into the goal is prohibited.
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The Original Six era ended in 1967 when the NHL doubled in size by adding six new expansion teams. The six existing teams were formed into the newly created East Division, while the new expansion teams were formed into the West Division. The NHL continued to expand, adding another six teams, to total 18 by 1974. This continued expansion was partially brought about by the NHL's attempts to compete with the World Hockey Association, which operated from 1972 until 1979 and sought to compete with the NHL for markets and players. Bobby Hull was the most famous player to defect to the rival league, signing a $2.75 million contract with the Winnipeg Jets. The NHL became involved in international play in the mid-1970s, starting with the Summit Series in 1972 which pitted the top Canadian players of the NHL against the top players in the Soviet Union, which was won by Canada with four wins, three losses, and a tie. Eventually, Soviet-Bloc players streamed into the NHL with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. (more...)
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| “ | A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can't hit one another. | ” |
| — Jimmy Cannon | ||
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Ice hockey has traditionally been played predominantly by men, the history of the women's game dates similarly to that of the men's. Women's hockey became more popular over the latter half of the 20th century as both a participant sport and a spectator sport.
Did you know ...
- ...that former Boston Bruins defenceman Zdeno Chára holds the record for the fastest slapshot struck in an All-Star skills competition, having propelled a puck 108.8 miles per hour?
- ...that for scoring a gold medal-winning, shootout goal against Canadian goaltender Corey Hirsch in the 1994 Winter Olympic Games, forward Peter Forsberg was featured on a Swedish postage stamp?
- ...that goaltenders are not sent to the penalty box and have their penalties served by proxy by any other player on the ice at the time of the penalty? (The exception being match penalty, where the goalkeeper actually has to leave the ice.)
- ...that Peter Pocklington, owner of the Edmonton Oilers, had his father's name, Basil, engraved on the Stanley Cup after the Oilers won the 1984 championship? Basil had absolutely nothing to do with the team beyond the family connection. The NHL decreed this to be unacceptable, and had the name X'd out.
- ...that Canada and the Soviet Union were disqualified from the 1987 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships following the Punch-up in Piestany?
