Portal:Ice_hockey
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.
Dominik Hašek (born January 29, 1965) is a retired professional ice hockey goaltender. In his 15-season NHL career, he has also played for the Chicago Blackhawks, Buffalo Sabres, and the Ottawa Senators. During his years in Buffalo, he became one of the league's finest goaltenders, earning him the nickname "The Dominator." His strong play has been credited with establishing European goaltenders in a league widely dominated by North Americans. Hašek is considered an unorthodox goaltender, with a distinct style that has labeled him a "flopper." He is best known for his concentration, foot speed, flexibility, and unconventional saves, such as covering the puck with his blocker rather than his trapper. His puckhandling is considered to be his biggest weakness. During the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, he led the Czech national ice hockey team to its first and only Olympic gold medal. (more...)
| “ | A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can't hit one another. | ” |
| — Jimmy Cannon | ||
The Giants Teddy Bear Toss, The Vancouver Giants fans launched a volley of plush toys onto the ice after the first goal during a game on December 15, 2006
- ...that HC Dynamo Moscow were the sole club from the Russian Hockey Super League (RHSL) to reach the 1998 European Hockey League final?
- ...that the Saint Mary's University (pictured) (Halifax, Nova Scotia) Huskies reached the final of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) ice hockey championship in four consecutive seasons between 1970 and 1973?
- ...that the Middlebury College Panthers, have won five women's ice hockey national championships?
- ...that Jim O'Brien played defense before switching in university to "play as a power-forward centre-ice man"?
