Ice hockey

Ice hockey
An ice hockey forward (Bryan Rust of the Pittsburgh Penguins) shoots toward a net defended by a goaltender (Braden Holtby of the Washington Capitals).
Highest governing bodyInternational Ice Hockey Federation
First played1875 (1875), Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Characteristics
Contact
Team members
  • 3 forwards
  • 2 defencemen
  • 1 goaltender
Mixed-sexNo
Type
Equipment
Venue
Presence
Olympic
ParalympicYes

Ice hockey (or simply hockey) is a team sport played on ice skates, usually on an ice skating rink with lines and markings specific to the sport. It belongs to a family of sports called hockey. In ice hockey, two opposing teams use ice hockey sticks to control, advance, and shoot a closed, vulcanized, rubber disc called a "puck" into the other team's goal. Each goal is worth one point. The team which scores the most goals is declared the winner. In a formal game, each team has six skaters on the ice at a time, barring any penalties, one of whom is the goaltender. Ice hockey is a full contact sport, and is considered to be one of the more physically demanding team sports.[1][2] It is distinct from field hockey, in which players move a ball around a non-frozen pitch using field hockey sticks.

The modern sport of ice hockey was developed in Canada, most notably in Montreal, where the first indoor game was played on March 3, 1875. Some characteristics of that game, such as the length of the ice rink and the use of a puck, have been retained to this day. Amateur ice hockey leagues began in the 1880s, and professional ice hockey originated around 1900. The Stanley Cup, emblematic of ice hockey club supremacy, was initially commissioned in 1892 as the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup" and was first awarded in 1893 to recognise the Canadian amateur champion and later became the championship trophy of the National Hockey League (NHL). In the early 1900s, the Canadian rules were adopted by the Ligue Internationale de Hockey sur Glace, in Paris, France, the precursor of the IIHF. The sport was played for the first time at the Olympics during the 1920 Summer Olympics—today it is a mainstay at the Winter Olympics. In 1994 ice hockey was officially recognized as Canada's national winter sport.[3]

While women also played during the game's early formative years, it was not until organizers began to officially remove body checking from female ice hockey beginning in the mid-1980s that it began to gain greater popularity, which by then had spread to Europe and a variety of other countries. The first IIHF Women's World Championship was held in 1990, and women's play was introduced into the Olympics in 1998.

  1. ^ Cox, M. H.; Miles, D. S.; Verde, T. J.; Rhodes, E. C. (1995). "Applied Physiology of Ice Hockey" (PDF). Sports Med. 19 (3): 184–201. doi:10.2165/00007256-199519030-00004. PMID 7784758. S2CID 26998630. Archived (PDF) from the original on January 9, 2023. Retrieved January 9, 2023.
  2. ^ Dillman, Charles J.; Stockholm, Alan J.; Greer, Nancy (1984). "Movement of ice hockey players". Isbs – Conference Proceedings Archive. ISBS.
  3. ^ "National Sports of Canada Act, S.C. 1994, c. 16". Government of Canada, Justice Laws. December 31, 2002. Archived from the original on November 6, 2021.