Hockey - Help out a newbie

[JoeBlank]

I'm taking my 6-year-old son to a AA Hockey game tonight, a first for the both of us. He won tickets at a school program.

I know very little about the sport, and have never even watched more than a few minutes on television. I gather there are 3 periods of 20 minutes each, that each team has a goalie and smacks a puck around trying to score, and that is about it. Sort of soccor on ice, but I am no fan of soccer either. Not that I dislike the sports, I am just in the southern U.S., where there is not much hockey to get excited about. Now we have a minor league team close by, and I thought I should at least give it a chance, especially now that we have the free tickets.

Do I need to know anything else? I don't think I will be much help if my son has any questions. Any words of advice or basic hockey info?

Thanks.

 

[Pinotage]

Ah, for a moment there I thought you were talking about Field Hockey. That I could've helped you with, but Ice Hockey, nope. Sorry!

Pinotage

 

[Dimwhit]

Hockey is one of the most exciting sports to watch live. I'm not good at explaining it, though. There are two rules you need to know about to avoid confusion: icing and offsides. Can someone else explain it well?

 

[barsoomcore]

Ah, hockey.

The first thing to learn about hockey is how to figure out where the puck is. It's small and it moves fast and it gets buried in the boards a lot, but pay attention and you'll be able to keep track of it.

The basics are simple: five skaters on each team, plus a goaltender, the object being to put the puck in the opposing team's net. Play begins with a face-off, much like a basketball tip-off only looking down instead of up. Three twenty-minute periods form the game, which is only stopped for a few reasons:

1. a goal is scored
2. a player commits a violation that requires a penalty
3. the puck goes out of bounds
4. one team or the other attempts to move the puck illegally (icing and offside)

After a goal is scored a face-off is held at center ice. If a penalty is called by the referee, the offending player must sit out for the next couple of minutes and his team has to play short-handed. Moving the puck illegally can consist of either shooting it from your side of the ice all the way to the far end of the opponent's ice (icing), or by having a player cross into the opponent's ice ahead of the puck (offside). In either case a face-off is held in your end.

Otherwise the play continues without stopping for the period. Teams often change their skaters while play is in progress, as skating around that fast in all that gear is pretty durn tiring! So a common play is to shoot the puck deep into the opponent's end and then skate for the bench, where a relief player will jump on as you clamber off.

Teams are usually organized in lines, both offensive and defensive -- usually three offensive players and two defensive at one time, though there are no formal distinctions between player roles (that is, a defensive player can do anything an offensive player can do, and vice versa).

You are not allowed to use your hands to move the puck to your team-mates, though you can catch a puck in mid-air and drop it at your feet. You CAN kick the puck around, but you cannot score a goal by kicking the puck into the net (this rule was probably invented after a few goalies took some nasty slashes to the face). You ARE allowed to hit opposing players -- you can skate into them and attempt to knock them down or get them to give up the puck. There's a bunch of restrictions on how hard you can hit and what parts of your body you can hit them with and so on, but hitting is a big part of the game. You'll often hear armchair coaches shrieking "Take the body!!!" -- they mean stop trying to steal the puck and just slam the guy into the boards.

It's fast, violent game and I find it tremendously exciting to watch. It displays both brute force and breathtaking grace, there's ALWAYS a potential for sudden, catastrophic reversals, it's full of real honest-to-goodness danger, and Canada OWNZ it.

I realise those may not be encouraging words for a non-Canadian whose child has started playing, but um, well, there you go. Plenty of Canadian kids end up on skates chasing a puck around, and we all turned out just fine.

Didn't we?

 

[Jdvn1]

The game always struck me as a little similar to soccer, but on a different medium.

Maybe that's because I learned soccer first and drew my own analogies.

 

[Khayman]

(...) Plenty of Canadian kids end up on skates chasing a puck around, and we all turned out just fine.

Didn't we?

I don't know about 'fine'--- I'd characterize myself as 'mostly functional'.

 

[Felonious Ntent]

Don't be suprised if a fight or 2 breaks out. This is part of hockey.

 

[IronWolf]

barsoomcore sums it up pretty well. You'll have a great time. Watching hockey live is great! It is really a lot of fun, even if you aren't a regular hockey fan.

 

[Thornir Alekeg]

Barsoomcore pretty much got what you needed, although I will add one thing: the goalie counts as a player on the ice and can be pulled to add another player on offense (usually only done if a team is down by one goal with about 1 minute left in the game). I always love watching the goalie waiting for his chance to break for the bench in that situation.

Also, if your seats are on one of the corners and you are sitting higher than the boards (the plexiglass around the edge of the rink), pay attention to the game, especially when the team shooting at the goal in your end is coming up the ice. Many times the player with the puck will cross the blue line and fire off a slapshot at the goal. If he gets under the puck a little too much it can sail over the boards - and those pucks can HURT!

 

[ghettognome]

Hockey IMO is the most exciting sport out there. Live games a blast! It was summed up pretty well. A typical game usually doesn't have a score higher than 3 to either team, at least in the larger leagues. I am not sure about smaller ones. Fighting is probably the most exciting part. Depending on the rules of a league, the refs won't interfere with a fight until either A: blood is drawn, or B: one of them gets knocked down. Usually it is the latter.