Ice Hockey

Ice hockey, known simply as hockey in Canada and the United States, 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. In the game two opposing teams of six skaters each tries to knock a flat round puck into the opponents' goal with angled sticks DO YOU KNOW Besides ice skates and sticks, hockey players are usually equipped with an array of safety gear to lessen their risk of serious injury. This includes a helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, protective gloves, heavily padded shorts, a 'jock' athletic protector, shin pads and a neck guard. The hockey skate is usually made of a thick layer of leather or nylon to protect the feet and lower legs of the player from injury. HISTORY OF ICE HOCKEY A 16th-century Dutch paintings show some townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on a frozen canal. Author Thomas Chandler Haliburton wrote in his book of boys from King's College School in Windsor, Nova Scotia, playing "hurley on the ice" when he was a student there around 1800. In the year 1825 Sir John Franklin wrote that "The game of hockey played on the ice was the morning sport" while on Great Bear Lake during one of his Arctic expeditions. In 1843 a British Army officer in Kingston (Ontario) wrote "Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice." FOUNDATION OF MODERN ICE HOCKEY The development of the modern ice hockey centered in Montreal on March 3, 1875, the first organized indoor game played at Montreal's Victoria Rink by James Creighton and several McGill University students. In the year 1877, several McGill students, including Henry Joseph, Creighton, Richard F. Smith, W.F. Robertson, and W.L. Murray codified seven ice hockey rules. McGill University Hockey Club, the first ice hockey club, was founded in 1880.

ICE HOCKEY TIPS

• Checking is a defencing tactic to attempt to take the puck from an opponent or to remove the opponent from play.
• Forechecking is checking in the other team's zone.
• Backchecking is checking while the other team is advancing down the ice toward one's own goal.
• Stick checking, poke checking and sweep checking are legal uses of the stick to obtain possession of the puck.
• A body checking is using shoulder or hip to strike an opponent who has the puck or who is the last to have touched it.
• Offensive tactics are designed to score goals by taking a shot. When a player purposely directs the puck towards the opponent's goal, he or she is said to shoot the puck.