What Is Hockey?

Hockey is considered one of the four major North American sports. Although hockey trails football, baseball and basketball in terms of popularity, hockey has provided some of sport's most exciting and meaningful moments that have lived on for years. Hockey requires great skating, team play, outstanding goaltending and toughness.

The Object

Ice hockey consists of two teams with six players per side. Each team has a goaltender, two defensemen and three forwards. The object of the game is to score more goals than your opponent over a 60-minute game, which is divided into three 20-minute periods. This is done by shooting the puck into a 4-foot high by 6-foot wide net that is protected by a goalie. The game is played on 200-foot long by 85-foot wide sheet of ice. Players can fire the puck -- a hard disk made of vulcanized rubber -- at speeds exceeding 100 mph that the goalie tries to stop.

Nuances

Hockey is a hard-hitting sport that features passing, stickhandling, checking and shooting. In hockey, a player who is carrying the puck can be hit hard by opponents. This is done to dislodge the puck carrier from the puck or force an errant pass. However, the player cannot be hit from behind or hit in the head. When a player has been hit illegally, referees will call penalties. When a player commits a minor penalty such as holding, roughing, hooking or tripping, that player goes to the penalty box for two minutes and his team plays short-handed. If the opponent scores a goal with the man advantage, the penalized player comes out of the box and the team is no longer short-handed.

Fighting

Hockey players also engage in fights on the ice from time to time. Players will exchange punches for 30 seconds to two minutes and the fight ends when one player is clearly beaten or officials stop the fight. Players go to the penalty box for five minutes and face no other ramifications if the fight is deemed as "clean."

1980 U.S. Olympic Hockey Team

The 1980 victory by the U.S. Olympic hockey team against the heavily favored juggernaut from the Soviet Union in the semifinals was dubbed the "Miracle On Ice" and is one of the most memorable moments in American sports history. The U.S. team, coached by Herb Brooks, then beat Finland for the gold medal. The team was made up of college all-stars, and the Soviet team it defeated was composed of that country's best players. The Soviets had defeated a team of NHL all-stars before the Olympics.

National Hockey League

The NHL is the top professional hockey league in North America. It consists of 30 teams, and each team plays 82 games during the regular season in a league comprised of two conferences and six divisions. Eight teams in each conference make the annual Stanley Cup playoffs, and the winner of four rounds of best-of-seven games playoffs earns the league championship. Wayne Gretzky, Bobby Orr, Mario Lemieux and Gordie Howe were some of the top players in league history. The Montreal Canadiens have won 24 league championships, more than any other franchise in league history.