Oct. 8th, 2011 01:22 am
Hockey Primer
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partypaprikaI've been trying to get my friend into hockey for quite a while. And she's decided that she wants to potentially check it out, but wanted a primer for reference since she knows very little about it. Therefore this is a
HOCKEY PRIMER for those who know nothing about hockey! (cue sparkly effects)
I want to start off by saying that I am a relative newbie to hockey--I only got into it as a casual fan three years ago, but I have come to really love it. That being said, as a girl from Southern California who had never seen a hockey game, I pretty much had no clue what was going on for the first year of watching. Luckily, I had a bunch of friends who were very knowledgeable and willing to answer all of my questions. I am not going to be anywhere near as good as they were. Let's set this bar sufficiently low.
Notes: I do not know everything about hockey. In fact, I likely know very little about hockey, so I'm going to stick to the things that I do know. If I have missed something or made a mistake, please let me know and I will fix it and/or add it in. For this same reason, I will also be mainly sticking to an overall explanation of the game rather than strategy, as I would not know good hockey strategy if it came up and bit me. I am also discussing NHL rules as I know nothing about international hockey :)
I also made this primer in mind for someone who has absolutely no knowledge of hockey. If you know anything about hockey, this might be a little too basic for you. In that case, I would refer you to some excellent resources such as this, which is much more in-depth and includes statistics and information on the NHL; the NHL page; or the blogs covering your favorite NHL team (or if you're like me, you can constantly refresh yahoo's NHL page).
Now onto the game!
Hockey Basics
First things first. What is hockey? Hockey is a game where two teams try to hit a puck into the other team's goal using a hockey stick (it gets better, I promise). See exhibits A:
Puck!
And the hockey stick:
Most players wrap the bottom and top of their stick so that they have extra traction, like so:
The tape on the top of the stick helps you hold it better and the tape on the bottom makes it easier to control the puck.
Ice hockey is played on a rink, which looks like this:
So what does all of this mean?
The red line divides up the ice in half. The team starting on the left hand side will be defending the left-side goal and trying to score on the right side goal.
The goal and blue lines divide the ice up into zones of play. If our hypothetical team is on the left, then the defending zone is where they will be on defense and the attacking zone is where they are trying to score. The neutral zone is just that--neutral.
The goalie generally stays in the crease and defends the goal. An opposing player cannot enter the crease unless the puck enters the crease before that player. So our left team players can't enter the right team's crease unless the puck is already in the crease.
There are two teams in hockey, each of which normally have six players on the ice on any given time. The players are generally lined up as so (for readability, I have only labeled the purple team):
The left wing, center, and right wing are the forwards. The right and left defensemen are the defense. While the actual positions on ice can be fluid, in general the defensemen tend to stay closer to their side of the rink and the forwards tend to push into the attacking zone so that they can score. So when the purple team has the puck and is in the attacking zone, the set up might look like this (PUCK is a stand-in for where the puck is):
If the green team is being aggressive in their offense, or a forward is expecting a pass, then a defensemen might hang back to guard that player and prevent him from getting a breakaway like so:
Realistically, hockey is a fairly fast-paced game, so players are likely to be in constant flux from offense to defense. Because hockey is played so fast, shifts tend to be fairly short--generally between one and two minutes. A shift is the term for how long a specific group of players are on the ice. Hockey teams tend to be organized into lines so that throughout the course of the game, the same right wing, center and left wing will all play together on a line and two defensemen will play together on a line.
For example, if my purple team has two right wings: Bob and Joe, two centers: Melinda and Courtney, two left wings: Franklin and Sara, two right defensemen: Nina and Eric, and two left defensemen: Tom and Laura, then my line combinations might be as follows:
Line 1 Forwards: Bob, Courtney, Sara
Line 2 Forwards: Joe, Melinda, Franklin
Line 1 Defense: Nina and Tom
Line 2 Defense: Eric and Laura
Line chemistry is very important. Even if Nina and Laura are the best technical defensemen, they may not have good chemistry together. Coaches will experiment to try to find which players work best together--but once they have a line that has great chemistry, they try not to mess too much with it.
How To Play
Now, the actual playing of the game. A hockey game is divided up into three periods of twenty minutes each. Therefore, unlike soccer, basketball or football, there is no halftime--instead you get two intermissions. This is especially fantastic if you are me because then you get two twenty minute breaks to get up and get more food and/or alcohol without having the miss the game. You can laugh at me, but seriously, I have learned my lesson about getting up during the game--THEY ALWAYS SCORE WHILE I'M GONE ) :
So the game, and each subsequent period, starts with a puck drop in the center face-off circle.
In any face-off, the two teams will line up so that the centers are facing each other. The referee will drop the puck onto the circle and the two players will vie to get the puck and pass it to their teammates. Usually, but not always, the center is the player who participates in the face-off, but any player is allowed to participate in a face-off. There are a few rules for a face-off, namely, you can't move your stick before the puck is dropped and no player can be further down the ice (towards the attacking zone) than the face-off circle. If the face-off player moves their stick before the puck is dropped, the ref will have another teammate participate in the face-off rather than the original player.
Face-offs can occur at any time during the game, not just at the start of the period. Generally, face-offs occur whenever there is a game stoppage. The face-off itself will generally be located at the face-off circle closest to where the game stopped (although there are a few exceptions). So face-offs can occur here:
or here:
etc. etc. The possibilities are endless.
So the face-off has occurred, the purple team got the puck and they're off and running. There's a few things that they are not allowed to do in terms of player interaction with the puck, namely be offsides, make an off-sided pass, or ice the puck.
A player is offsides when they cross the attacking zone blue line before the puck. A player cannot enter the attacking zone unless the puck has already crossed into the attacking zone.
If the purple center has the puck, then the right wing is offsides, since the puck has not yet crossed the attacking zone blue line. A player must wait at the blue line until the puck crosses the blue line--where the left wing currently is. Once the puck has crossed the blue line, then the attacking players can cross the blue line at will, until the puck is cleared from the attacking zone into the neutral or defensive zone. Then the purple players must leave the attacking zone. If the puck is cleared, an attacking player is not considered offsides while they are leaving the attacking zone. However, they must clear the attacking zone before the puck goes back into the attacking zone. If they do not clear the attacking zone and then touch the puck--they are offsides.
So to restate it, if the green team had the puck in the defensive zone and the purple team cleared it, the green left wing would not be offsides as long as he cleared the defensive blue line before touching the puck:
An offsides call results in a face-off at the nearest face-off circle in the neutral zone (see the second face-off example picture).
An offsides pass is when an attacking player in the attacking zone passes back over the blue line to one of his or her teammates, thus making the attacking player now offsides. I know you thought it might be allowed, but, it is in fact, not.
The other big move that isn't allowed is icing. Icing is when a player hits the puck over the center red line to the attacking goal line (so two red lines) and the opposing team gets to it before the original player's teammate. Icing looks like:
After an icing call, there is a face-off back in the defensive zone. The only time icing is not called is during a penalty kill (which I'll get to in a bit).
A little note on scoring. Hockey is a fairly low scoring game. It's more similar to soccer in that respect than basketball. A low scoring game might be 0-0 whereas the highest scoring game I've ever seen was 7-6. When a player scores three goals in one night, it's called a hat trick. People get super excited and throw their hats onto the ice. Hat tricks are a pretty big deal and there's a bunch of variations. My personal favorite is a Gordie Howe hat trick where a player scores a goal, assists on a goal AND gets into a fight.
Penalties
Alright, so now we get to the exciting part of the game! Penalties!
Common penalties are things like holding when one player impedes another player's progress by holding onto the player, their jersey or stick. Slashing where one player slashes at another with their stick. High-sticking is when a player hits another player with his stick in the neck or head. Cross-checking is when one player hits another player with their stick while holding the stick in both hands. Other penalties include roughing, interference, delay of game, and tripping. For most of the above penalties, the instigating player gets two minutes in the penalty box.
There are a few penalties that don't derive from players hitting each other--namely bench penalties and delay of game penalties. A bench penalty is when you have too many men on the ice. It's mainly called when the puck hits a player who is changing shifts so that they are technically considered "on the ice" in addition to their five other teammates. A bench penalty can also be called if a player or coach on the bench is behaving unsportsmanly (is that a word?). A delay of game penalty is when a player intentionally stops the play of the game. It generally only comes up when a player hits the puck out of the rink into the stands or the goalie knocks the goal off of its stands.
As a mostly legal move, checking is mostly not a penalty. Checking--where you hit another play using your hips or shoulders--is generally allowed unless it's considered to be reckless. That being said, there are definitely checks or hits that are legal but yet are clearly dirty. Players who make a lot of dirty hits are fairly unpopular with both players and fans.
My favorite kind of penalties are FIGHTING!
Fighting is kind of like the equivalent of a handshake in hockey. They're pretty common and it's a good way to see the character of the players involved. They are firm and personal....? I'm not sure I can take the analogy any further. But let me say this--fights are awesome. The first time that I saw an NHL fight, I was absolutely shocked. The refs just let them go at it. I remember turning to my friends and saying "Isn't anyone going to break them up? They're hitting each other!" And my friends all gave me this look that said 'Why would anyone want to stop them?' Believe me when I say that I have seen the error of my ways. Fights are fantastic. However, for fighting, the players fighting will generally get a major (penalty) which is five minutes.
If the ref deems any of the above penalty to be especially egregious, then the ref may give a penalty of ten minutes, ejection or suspension.
When one team has a penalty, it turns into five players v. four players, also known as a power play. It looks something like this:
Power plays are pretty advantageous for the team with a man up, so during the power play the team defending will not get called for icing. The team defending against the power play is on penalty kill during the penalty. For fighting penalties, if both teams have a man in the penalty box, then neither team is down a man (meaning it's still five on five). Occasionally, a team will incur two penalties so you might get situations like 5 on 3, which are pretty crazy.
If the game is still tied at the end of three periods, then the game will go into overtime. In the regular season, overtime consists of a five minute sudden death period where the teams play four on four (that is a crazy new rule--I'm fairly certain, but not one hundred percent sure that this was introduced just this year). If neither team has scored in the five minute overtime, then the teams go to a shootout. The shootout starts with three players for each team alternating shooting. After the three players for each team go, whichever team has the most points for the shootout wins. If the team are tied in points scored, or neither team has scored, then the teams alternate players until one team scores and the other team fails to correspondingly score in that round. During playoffs, there are no shootouts and the teams keep playing twenty minute sudden death periods until one team finally scores.
Alright, so there are the basics. Players shoot and try to score, goalies stop the shots, and everyone has a good time.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The NHL
Congratulations! You've made it this far! As a reward, I will share a little bit more of information about the NHL.
The NHL (National Hockey League or Ligue nationale de hockey si vous parlez francais) currently has 30 teams in it. The majority of the teams are based in the United States (23) and there are a few teams up in Canada (7). It's actually pretty funny that most of the teams are US based because hockey is huge in Canada. Like .... center of the universe huge. I remember catching an episode of the show "Life With Derek" with my younger brother and they were mentioning how Derek was so popular and cool and the captain of the hockey team. We almost died laughing. But that's how it works up in Canada.
Therefore, unsurprisingly, a large amount of the players in the NHL are Canadian. But other countries aren't too shabby in the representation department. There's a fair amount of Russian, Swedish, Czech and American players in the mix. The NHL works as a kind of farm system. Players generally come up through junior leagues, then are drafted by teams and go into the team's minor league affiliate. These players can then be called up throughout the course of the season to the NHL team. Because of this system, a lot of players are "home grown" and coaches and fans alike can watch their progress.
The NHL is also big on mentoring, so oftentimes, when a younger player either moves up to the NHL or is signed directly to an NHL team, older players will step in and help the player's transition to the NHL. Sometimes, they even room together.
The 30 teams are divided up into two conferences-the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference. You would think that it should be easy to figure out which teams belong in which conference. You would be wrong. It's a little counter-intuitive because of the way that teams have moved to new cities, so you have the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings in the Central Division of the Western Conference and the Winnipeg Jets in the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference (LOLOL that one never stops being funny, those poor guys).
Each conference is divided up into three divisions of five teams each. Teams will play the other teams in their division six times over the course of the season, so there's plenty of good opportunities for rivalries to pop up between teams. Teams will play all of the other teams in the conference more than once, but may only play teams in the other conference once or twice.
There are a total of 82 games over the course of the season. After the regular season is playoffs (aka my favorite time of year). The top 8 teams from each conference will go into the playoffs. It is seeded, but it's not exactly determined by outright records. The top three spots for each conference will be determined by the leader of each division by points. The remaining spots will be determined by the teams in the conference with the highest points. That may lead to a result where the number 3 team actually has less points than the number four team, but they automatically get a higher seed due to their division title.
Points are accumulated during the course of the regular season. For each game that a team wins, they get two points. For each outright loss in regulation time, a team will receive zero points. If a team loses in overtime or a shootout, they get one point.
The playoffs are called the Stanley Cup playoffs as the winner takes home the Stanley Cup. Behold in all its glory:
It is pretty sweet. In fact, it has its own escort. NO SERIOUSLY. There is a man that follows Lord Stanley around and makes sure that no one breaks him.
Everyone on the winning team gets to spend a day with the Stanley Cup and so some pretty crazy things have happened to it. A player's small child accidentally went to the bathroom in the cup. Brent Sopel marched with it in the Chicago Pride parade! Apparently Lord Stanley has also been skydiving? It's a wild world.
Playoffs are held over four rounds. Only in the last round will teams from opposing conferences meet. In the first round, the sixteen teams are matched up according to seed ranking in their conferences. The first seed will play the eighth seed, the second seed will play the seventh seed etc. etc. The teams play to the best of seven, so at a minimum a team has to play four games. It's pretty rare to see a complete blowout where one teams wins four games in a row, but it does happen. In the second round, the winning teams are again paired up according to ranking so the highest ranked team plays the lowest ranked team and the two middle seeded teams play each other. Yep, it's pretty much a normal sports bracket.
In the final round, the Western Conference winner and the Eastern Conference winner will meet. It's epic. Last year, the Vancouver Canucks played against the Boston Bruins and it went to the full seven games. When Vancouver lost, the town rioted. Yes, that's right. Canadians rioted. I'm pretty sure you never thought that you would see those two words in the same sentence. But that's the kind of passionate emotions (or slightly intimidating emotions) that hockey tends to induce.
As a reward for making it all the way to the end, here are some pictures of hockey players! (yes, they might mostly be Washington Capitals, what of it?)
So when I said there were Russians--I meant that there were also really crazy awesome Russians like above.
What? How did that incredibly adorable picture of John Carlson from the Washington Capitals with a small child get in there. That's so weird.
Anyways, now we've really reached the end. Sorry ): On the bright side, I will be making a Capitals pimp post now that my friend, hopefully, understands what I'm talking about. And please please please let me know if I left anything out, made any mistakes, or you just have any feedback.
Additional Resources:
A fantastic primer, slightly dated, but perfect for all the essentials.
As always, wikipedia proved invaluable. Here's the general ice hockey link and then the NHL
And then, here's a great hockey glossary if you want to look up more terms.
HOCKEY PRIMER for those who know nothing about hockey! (cue sparkly effects)
I want to start off by saying that I am a relative newbie to hockey--I only got into it as a casual fan three years ago, but I have come to really love it. That being said, as a girl from Southern California who had never seen a hockey game, I pretty much had no clue what was going on for the first year of watching. Luckily, I had a bunch of friends who were very knowledgeable and willing to answer all of my questions. I am not going to be anywhere near as good as they were. Let's set this bar sufficiently low.
Notes: I do not know everything about hockey. In fact, I likely know very little about hockey, so I'm going to stick to the things that I do know. If I have missed something or made a mistake, please let me know and I will fix it and/or add it in. For this same reason, I will also be mainly sticking to an overall explanation of the game rather than strategy, as I would not know good hockey strategy if it came up and bit me. I am also discussing NHL rules as I know nothing about international hockey :)
I also made this primer in mind for someone who has absolutely no knowledge of hockey. If you know anything about hockey, this might be a little too basic for you. In that case, I would refer you to some excellent resources such as this, which is much more in-depth and includes statistics and information on the NHL; the NHL page; or the blogs covering your favorite NHL team (or if you're like me, you can constantly refresh yahoo's NHL page).
Now onto the game!
Hockey Basics
First things first. What is hockey? Hockey is a game where two teams try to hit a puck into the other team's goal using a hockey stick (it gets better, I promise). See exhibits A:
Puck!
And the hockey stick:
Most players wrap the bottom and top of their stick so that they have extra traction, like so:
The tape on the top of the stick helps you hold it better and the tape on the bottom makes it easier to control the puck.
Ice hockey is played on a rink, which looks like this:
So what does all of this mean?
The red line divides up the ice in half. The team starting on the left hand side will be defending the left-side goal and trying to score on the right side goal.
The goal and blue lines divide the ice up into zones of play. If our hypothetical team is on the left, then the defending zone is where they will be on defense and the attacking zone is where they are trying to score. The neutral zone is just that--neutral.
The goalie generally stays in the crease and defends the goal. An opposing player cannot enter the crease unless the puck enters the crease before that player. So our left team players can't enter the right team's crease unless the puck is already in the crease.
There are two teams in hockey, each of which normally have six players on the ice on any given time. The players are generally lined up as so (for readability, I have only labeled the purple team):
The left wing, center, and right wing are the forwards. The right and left defensemen are the defense. While the actual positions on ice can be fluid, in general the defensemen tend to stay closer to their side of the rink and the forwards tend to push into the attacking zone so that they can score. So when the purple team has the puck and is in the attacking zone, the set up might look like this (PUCK is a stand-in for where the puck is):
If the green team is being aggressive in their offense, or a forward is expecting a pass, then a defensemen might hang back to guard that player and prevent him from getting a breakaway like so:
Realistically, hockey is a fairly fast-paced game, so players are likely to be in constant flux from offense to defense. Because hockey is played so fast, shifts tend to be fairly short--generally between one and two minutes. A shift is the term for how long a specific group of players are on the ice. Hockey teams tend to be organized into lines so that throughout the course of the game, the same right wing, center and left wing will all play together on a line and two defensemen will play together on a line.
For example, if my purple team has two right wings: Bob and Joe, two centers: Melinda and Courtney, two left wings: Franklin and Sara, two right defensemen: Nina and Eric, and two left defensemen: Tom and Laura, then my line combinations might be as follows:
Line 1 Forwards: Bob, Courtney, Sara
Line 2 Forwards: Joe, Melinda, Franklin
Line 1 Defense: Nina and Tom
Line 2 Defense: Eric and Laura
Line chemistry is very important. Even if Nina and Laura are the best technical defensemen, they may not have good chemistry together. Coaches will experiment to try to find which players work best together--but once they have a line that has great chemistry, they try not to mess too much with it.
How To Play
Now, the actual playing of the game. A hockey game is divided up into three periods of twenty minutes each. Therefore, unlike soccer, basketball or football, there is no halftime--instead you get two intermissions. This is especially fantastic if you are me because then you get two twenty minute breaks to get up and get more food and/or alcohol without having the miss the game. You can laugh at me, but seriously, I have learned my lesson about getting up during the game--THEY ALWAYS SCORE WHILE I'M GONE ) :
So the game, and each subsequent period, starts with a puck drop in the center face-off circle.
In any face-off, the two teams will line up so that the centers are facing each other. The referee will drop the puck onto the circle and the two players will vie to get the puck and pass it to their teammates. Usually, but not always, the center is the player who participates in the face-off, but any player is allowed to participate in a face-off. There are a few rules for a face-off, namely, you can't move your stick before the puck is dropped and no player can be further down the ice (towards the attacking zone) than the face-off circle. If the face-off player moves their stick before the puck is dropped, the ref will have another teammate participate in the face-off rather than the original player.
Face-offs can occur at any time during the game, not just at the start of the period. Generally, face-offs occur whenever there is a game stoppage. The face-off itself will generally be located at the face-off circle closest to where the game stopped (although there are a few exceptions). So face-offs can occur here:
or here:
etc. etc. The possibilities are endless.
So the face-off has occurred, the purple team got the puck and they're off and running. There's a few things that they are not allowed to do in terms of player interaction with the puck, namely be offsides, make an off-sided pass, or ice the puck.
A player is offsides when they cross the attacking zone blue line before the puck. A player cannot enter the attacking zone unless the puck has already crossed into the attacking zone.
If the purple center has the puck, then the right wing is offsides, since the puck has not yet crossed the attacking zone blue line. A player must wait at the blue line until the puck crosses the blue line--where the left wing currently is. Once the puck has crossed the blue line, then the attacking players can cross the blue line at will, until the puck is cleared from the attacking zone into the neutral or defensive zone. Then the purple players must leave the attacking zone. If the puck is cleared, an attacking player is not considered offsides while they are leaving the attacking zone. However, they must clear the attacking zone before the puck goes back into the attacking zone. If they do not clear the attacking zone and then touch the puck--they are offsides.
So to restate it, if the green team had the puck in the defensive zone and the purple team cleared it, the green left wing would not be offsides as long as he cleared the defensive blue line before touching the puck:
An offsides call results in a face-off at the nearest face-off circle in the neutral zone (see the second face-off example picture).
An offsides pass is when an attacking player in the attacking zone passes back over the blue line to one of his or her teammates, thus making the attacking player now offsides. I know you thought it might be allowed, but, it is in fact, not.
The other big move that isn't allowed is icing. Icing is when a player hits the puck over the center red line to the attacking goal line (so two red lines) and the opposing team gets to it before the original player's teammate. Icing looks like:
After an icing call, there is a face-off back in the defensive zone. The only time icing is not called is during a penalty kill (which I'll get to in a bit).
A little note on scoring. Hockey is a fairly low scoring game. It's more similar to soccer in that respect than basketball. A low scoring game might be 0-0 whereas the highest scoring game I've ever seen was 7-6. When a player scores three goals in one night, it's called a hat trick. People get super excited and throw their hats onto the ice. Hat tricks are a pretty big deal and there's a bunch of variations. My personal favorite is a Gordie Howe hat trick where a player scores a goal, assists on a goal AND gets into a fight.
Penalties
Alright, so now we get to the exciting part of the game! Penalties!
Common penalties are things like holding when one player impedes another player's progress by holding onto the player, their jersey or stick. Slashing where one player slashes at another with their stick. High-sticking is when a player hits another player with his stick in the neck or head. Cross-checking is when one player hits another player with their stick while holding the stick in both hands. Other penalties include roughing, interference, delay of game, and tripping. For most of the above penalties, the instigating player gets two minutes in the penalty box.
There are a few penalties that don't derive from players hitting each other--namely bench penalties and delay of game penalties. A bench penalty is when you have too many men on the ice. It's mainly called when the puck hits a player who is changing shifts so that they are technically considered "on the ice" in addition to their five other teammates. A bench penalty can also be called if a player or coach on the bench is behaving unsportsmanly (is that a word?). A delay of game penalty is when a player intentionally stops the play of the game. It generally only comes up when a player hits the puck out of the rink into the stands or the goalie knocks the goal off of its stands.
As a mostly legal move, checking is mostly not a penalty. Checking--where you hit another play using your hips or shoulders--is generally allowed unless it's considered to be reckless. That being said, there are definitely checks or hits that are legal but yet are clearly dirty. Players who make a lot of dirty hits are fairly unpopular with both players and fans.
My favorite kind of penalties are FIGHTING!
Fighting is kind of like the equivalent of a handshake in hockey. They're pretty common and it's a good way to see the character of the players involved. They are firm and personal....? I'm not sure I can take the analogy any further. But let me say this--fights are awesome. The first time that I saw an NHL fight, I was absolutely shocked. The refs just let them go at it. I remember turning to my friends and saying "Isn't anyone going to break them up? They're hitting each other!" And my friends all gave me this look that said 'Why would anyone want to stop them?' Believe me when I say that I have seen the error of my ways. Fights are fantastic. However, for fighting, the players fighting will generally get a major (penalty) which is five minutes.
If the ref deems any of the above penalty to be especially egregious, then the ref may give a penalty of ten minutes, ejection or suspension.
When one team has a penalty, it turns into five players v. four players, also known as a power play. It looks something like this:
Power plays are pretty advantageous for the team with a man up, so during the power play the team defending will not get called for icing. The team defending against the power play is on penalty kill during the penalty. For fighting penalties, if both teams have a man in the penalty box, then neither team is down a man (meaning it's still five on five). Occasionally, a team will incur two penalties so you might get situations like 5 on 3, which are pretty crazy.
If the game is still tied at the end of three periods, then the game will go into overtime. In the regular season, overtime consists of a five minute sudden death period where the teams play four on four (that is a crazy new rule--I'm fairly certain, but not one hundred percent sure that this was introduced just this year). If neither team has scored in the five minute overtime, then the teams go to a shootout. The shootout starts with three players for each team alternating shooting. After the three players for each team go, whichever team has the most points for the shootout wins. If the team are tied in points scored, or neither team has scored, then the teams alternate players until one team scores and the other team fails to correspondingly score in that round. During playoffs, there are no shootouts and the teams keep playing twenty minute sudden death periods until one team finally scores.
Alright, so there are the basics. Players shoot and try to score, goalies stop the shots, and everyone has a good time.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
The NHL
Congratulations! You've made it this far! As a reward, I will share a little bit more of information about the NHL.
The NHL (National Hockey League or Ligue nationale de hockey si vous parlez francais) currently has 30 teams in it. The majority of the teams are based in the United States (23) and there are a few teams up in Canada (7). It's actually pretty funny that most of the teams are US based because hockey is huge in Canada. Like .... center of the universe huge. I remember catching an episode of the show "Life With Derek" with my younger brother and they were mentioning how Derek was so popular and cool and the captain of the hockey team. We almost died laughing. But that's how it works up in Canada.
Therefore, unsurprisingly, a large amount of the players in the NHL are Canadian. But other countries aren't too shabby in the representation department. There's a fair amount of Russian, Swedish, Czech and American players in the mix. The NHL works as a kind of farm system. Players generally come up through junior leagues, then are drafted by teams and go into the team's minor league affiliate. These players can then be called up throughout the course of the season to the NHL team. Because of this system, a lot of players are "home grown" and coaches and fans alike can watch their progress.
The NHL is also big on mentoring, so oftentimes, when a younger player either moves up to the NHL or is signed directly to an NHL team, older players will step in and help the player's transition to the NHL. Sometimes, they even room together.
The 30 teams are divided up into two conferences-the Western Conference and the Eastern Conference. You would think that it should be easy to figure out which teams belong in which conference. You would be wrong. It's a little counter-intuitive because of the way that teams have moved to new cities, so you have the Columbus Blue Jackets and Detroit Red Wings in the Central Division of the Western Conference and the Winnipeg Jets in the Southeast Division of the Eastern Conference (LOLOL that one never stops being funny, those poor guys).
Each conference is divided up into three divisions of five teams each. Teams will play the other teams in their division six times over the course of the season, so there's plenty of good opportunities for rivalries to pop up between teams. Teams will play all of the other teams in the conference more than once, but may only play teams in the other conference once or twice.
There are a total of 82 games over the course of the season. After the regular season is playoffs (aka my favorite time of year). The top 8 teams from each conference will go into the playoffs. It is seeded, but it's not exactly determined by outright records. The top three spots for each conference will be determined by the leader of each division by points. The remaining spots will be determined by the teams in the conference with the highest points. That may lead to a result where the number 3 team actually has less points than the number four team, but they automatically get a higher seed due to their division title.
Points are accumulated during the course of the regular season. For each game that a team wins, they get two points. For each outright loss in regulation time, a team will receive zero points. If a team loses in overtime or a shootout, they get one point.
The playoffs are called the Stanley Cup playoffs as the winner takes home the Stanley Cup. Behold in all its glory:
It is pretty sweet. In fact, it has its own escort. NO SERIOUSLY. There is a man that follows Lord Stanley around and makes sure that no one breaks him.
Everyone on the winning team gets to spend a day with the Stanley Cup and so some pretty crazy things have happened to it. A player's small child accidentally went to the bathroom in the cup. Brent Sopel marched with it in the Chicago Pride parade! Apparently Lord Stanley has also been skydiving? It's a wild world.
Playoffs are held over four rounds. Only in the last round will teams from opposing conferences meet. In the first round, the sixteen teams are matched up according to seed ranking in their conferences. The first seed will play the eighth seed, the second seed will play the seventh seed etc. etc. The teams play to the best of seven, so at a minimum a team has to play four games. It's pretty rare to see a complete blowout where one teams wins four games in a row, but it does happen. In the second round, the winning teams are again paired up according to ranking so the highest ranked team plays the lowest ranked team and the two middle seeded teams play each other. Yep, it's pretty much a normal sports bracket.
In the final round, the Western Conference winner and the Eastern Conference winner will meet. It's epic. Last year, the Vancouver Canucks played against the Boston Bruins and it went to the full seven games. When Vancouver lost, the town rioted. Yes, that's right. Canadians rioted. I'm pretty sure you never thought that you would see those two words in the same sentence. But that's the kind of passionate emotions (or slightly intimidating emotions) that hockey tends to induce.
As a reward for making it all the way to the end, here are some pictures of hockey players! (yes, they might mostly be Washington Capitals, what of it?)
So when I said there were Russians--I meant that there were also really crazy awesome Russians like above.
What? How did that incredibly adorable picture of John Carlson from the Washington Capitals with a small child get in there. That's so weird.
Anyways, now we've really reached the end. Sorry ): On the bright side, I will be making a Capitals pimp post now that my friend, hopefully, understands what I'm talking about. And please please please let me know if I left anything out, made any mistakes, or you just have any feedback.
Additional Resources:
A fantastic primer, slightly dated, but perfect for all the essentials.
As always, wikipedia proved invaluable. Here's the general ice hockey link and then the NHL
And then, here's a great hockey glossary if you want to look up more terms.
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