Ice Hockey - Overview

Ice Hockey believe it or not is thought to have been first played by English people! Apparently over in Canada around 1800’s on frozen over ponds, although no-one actually knows the whole truth in this. It was originally called Ice Hurley, which was basically the same game, just with a ball instead of a puck, and without the pads. The game grew and grew from starting in Montreal; it started spreading, and spilled over the Canadian border into the USA. Eventually in around the early-mid 1900’s the game had grown into what it is today, a bone crunching, fast paced blur of an American game.

The rules of Ice Hockey may sound a little confusing and yes they are for a wee bit until you get used to them. As like most sports you cannot shout abusive language, or show un-sportsman like behavior e.g. knocking the puck away from an official when they are trying to retrieve it or and however unlikely it may seem spitting (and it does happen). For most of these un-sportsman like conducts you will get a 2min penalty meaning you have been "sin-binned" for 2mins, and you can also get a 2min penalty by roughing (Pushing an opponent with both hands), tripping(tripping an opponent by using your stick), Hooking (using your stick to pull back an opponent) plus a lot more which would simply take up a lot of room and are not really worth explaining.

You can also serve major penalty’s which give you 5mins e.g. fighting gives you 5mins in the sin-bin. Icing the puck is when you hit the puck from your half of the ice into the opponents half, if the puck then goes behind the net you have iced the puck and a face-off shall restart the game. A face off always starts the game and after a penalty has been conceded it is between two players from opposite teams who both try and pass the puck before the other to a teammate.

There are also a few other small rules that aren’t really important un-less you are going to take up the sport. Ice hockey in the UK is a pretty popular sport around areas that have Ice rinks (Leicester not having one). The nearest Ice rinks to Leicester would be Nottingham or Coventry, at which the Notts Panthers and the Coventry Blaze play. The ice rinks also do public skating so go down for a skate anyway it is brilliant fun no matter what age you are.

With the Winter Olympics coming up and Ice hockey being one of the sports involved, try and catch a match if you can, it is a wicked game even if you don’t know the rules. Team GB aren’t considered to be contenders for medals in Ice Hockey as Team USA, Team Canada or Team Czech Republic are considered to be the "favourites", but who knows?

I hope this review has been a little helpful as I found it confusing my-self. I hope your knowledge of Ice hockey is now at least a tiny weenie bit better than it already was.