Ice Hockey
Olympic sport since 1920
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. The most prominent ice hockey nations are Canada, Russia, the United States, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, and the Slovak Republic.
Ice hockey is played on a hockey rink by six players per side, each of whom is on ice skates. The objective of the game is to score goals by playing a hard vulcanized rubber disc, the puck, into the opponent’s goal net, which is placed at the opposite end 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 redirect the puck with any part of their bodies, subject to certain restrictions. One of the six players is typically a goaltender, whose primary job is to stop the puck from entering the net, and who is permitted unique gear towards that end.
The history of ice hockey is one of the most contested in all of sports. The city of Montreal had been traditionally credited with being the birthplace of hockey, but early paintings contest this claim; 16th-century Dutch paintings show a number of townsfolk playing a hockey-like game on a frozen canal.