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| Ice Hockey is one of the world's fastest team sports around, with players on skates capable of going high speeds on natural or artificial ice surfaces. The most prominent ice hockey nations are Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States. While there are 64 total members of the International Ice Hockey Federation, those seven nations have dominated ice hockey. |
| Hockey's worldwide popularity is concentrated primarily in locales cold enough for natural, long-term seasonal ice cover. It is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented by the National Hockey League (NHL) at the highest level. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity. Six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadians currently outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost three to one, and about thirty percent of the league's players are non-North Americans. The sport's popularily in the US is centralized in certain regions, notably the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and Alaska. |
| Ice hockey is played on a hockey rink. During normal play, there are six players per side on the ice at any time, 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 job is to stop the puck from entering the net. |
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