Ice Hockey
Tuesday, 31 Jul 2007 17:38
The Stanley Cup stands three feet tall - literally the biggest trophy in professional sport
With football off the radar for a few months, InTheNews takes the opportunity to look at some of the sports you may not know so much about – this week, it's the fast, furious and sometimes violent world of ice hockey.
The game
Ice hockey is a fairly straight-forward sport. Think of it as football – except on ice, with big sticks and a smaller ball (the puck).
The aim is to score more goals than your opponent into a net, guarded by (funnily enough) a net-minder or goal-tender.
The rest of the team is comprised of five players, who play in a number of positions, similar to those on a football pitch. Two defensemen generally remain at the back of the five and are larger and more heavily-built than their team-mates. A centre is usually positioned in the middle of the rink and is the playmaker of the team, usually showing good all-round skills but particularly excellent vision and a solid and reliable pass.
Forwards and wings are the attacking players on the ice, renowned for scoring and setting up the goals. However because of the fluid nature of the sport and the relatively small playing area, all members of the team will be required to perform all functions at some point, with the exception of the goal-tender.
There are various other laws, including penalties for fighting, hooking, tripping, obstruction and the like. Players can be sin-binned for the offences, for anything up to five minutes (fighting or abusing the officials), but normally the penalty is no more than two minutes off the ice.
During this time the offending team is down to four men and the team with the one-man advantage is said to be on a power play.
The remaining rules concern legal passes. The National Hockey League (NHL) recently instituted a change of their laws which reduced the stop-start nature of the game, making it more accessible to new fans.
This abolished some of the rules regarding two-line passes (which prevented teams playing long passes up the ice), icing (shooting the puck the length of the ice to stop the game, for instance, when the opposition are on the power play) and the offside laws (which stop players crossing certain lines on the rink before the puck does) were also relaxed.
The big event
The Stanley Cup is the biggest club event on the calendar in the NHL. It comprises a seven-game series between the two teams that have made it through the play-offs in the Eastern and Western conferences.
The eight best teams from each conference qualify for the knockout stages at the end of the regular season and play each other through three rounds, each a seven-game series, with the overall winner of the conference knockout tournament qualifying for the Stanley Cup finals.
The other big event in the international calendar is the World Championships, which take place in late spring every year.
It features 40 teams split up into groups based on their past performances on the world stage, and the top 16 teams make up Division One, which is considered the main competition, similar to the football World Cup.
The teams are divided into two groups of eight, with the top four from each advancing to the knockout stages, which culminates in the final where the teams play for the coveted gold medal.
The world's best
Technically the best national side in the world is Canada, having won this year's World Championship in Moscow, Russia. They beat Finland in the final of the tournament – also one of the historically strongest sides.
Several other nations are also typically among the top teams in the world, including the Czech Republic (who won three straight world titles in 1999, 2000 and 2001), Sweden (who, until this year, had only finished outside the medals on three occasions since 1990) and Russia (third at the 2007 World Championships).
The United States, which operates the richest national ice hockey league in the world, is also generally in the top bracket because of its proximity to the NHL, but it is rarely considered to have one of the most talented or strongest squads.
The top club side in the NHL, at the moment, are the Anaheim Ducks. They won the Stanley Cup for the first time in their history in the NHL playoffs earlier this year.
Traditionally, the best teams tend to be those with historical significance – most notably the 'Original Six' who were the founding members of the modern-day NHL: Detroit Red Wings; Montreal Canadiens; Toronto Maple Leafs; Boston Bruins; Chicago Blackhawks; and New York Rangers.
Stereotypical fan
When it comes to NHL fans, they tend to be fairly vocal and quite particular about how they view the sport, especially if they are fans of one of the Original Six who tend to have something of a superiority complex when it comes to expansion teams.
However, fans of the various national teams are rabidly patriotic. For many of the more prestigious nations – Russia, the Czech Republic and Sweden, to name but three – ice hockey rivals football as the most popular national sport.
In Canada, ice hockey outweighs every other pastime as the most popular, and as such Canadian NHL fans tend to be the most patriotic and outspoken of all.
Stereotypical player
Ice hockey players tend to be pretty big, pretty intimidating and minus at least one or two teeth.
The game can be brutal and the players reflect that. Almost exclusively they will have a mean streak, which comes out when you see one man batter another into one of the sideboards or get involved in a fight with an opponent. It says something when there is a specifically well-known and well-used set penalty for having a scrap on the ice.
Players are gentlemanly however and, in much the same way as rugby players tend to leave their differences on the field, shake hands at the end and have a drink together afterwards, ice hockey players will socialise within their sport a good deal.
It comes from being part of that club of a minority sport. As rugby plays second fiddle to football here in the UK, so ice hockey must sit behind American football, baseball and basketball in the United States.
Celebrity fans
You can pretty much deduce that most Canadian celebrities will have some kind of allegiance to a hockey team in the NHL. For instance Mike Myers, born in Ontario, is a big Maple Leafs fan, while 24 star Kiefer Sutherland is often seen sitting rink-side when he's not off filming.
Among the other film stars who follow hockey are Kurt Russell and Ray Liotta, who was seen taking a break from playing another moody mob villain to watch his beloved Anaheim Ducks clinch the biggest trophy in sport.
Rapper and pop star Lil' Jon is a big Atlanta Thrashers supporter, while Kid Rock, another music star, is a devoted fan of perhaps the best-known of all NHL teams – the Detroit Red Wings.
Why should I watch/play it?
The sport is fast and furious and while a live game may make it difficult to follow the puck at times, the action is unbelievable up close.
There is nothing quite like the sound of skates scraping against the ice as player twist and turn at break-neck speed and the atmosphere inside the arenas of the NHL is unlike any other sport in north America, especially when it is one of the well-worn rivalries in Canada or the northern states.
Still, if you get the chance to catch a live game on TV, it is still worth a watch and since the rule changes in the NHL last season the game is more exciting than ever – marrying the speed and excitement of the skating with the raw power, brute force and sometimes down-right passion that comes when players get a little too hot under the colour and start trading blows.
Where do I go from here?
If you fancy catching some top-level ice hockey in the UK, there has never been a better time than now.
The Stanley Cup champions, Anaheim Ducks, are coming to London to play the Los Angeles Kings in what is sure to be a spectacular season-opening two-game series at the O2 Arena on September 29th and 30th (http://www.theo2.co.uk/web/guest/whatson/sports).
You can watch the NHL itself from the United States if you are prepared to stay up pretty late. Channel Five frequently covers matches on late-night TV, but unfortunately for office workers, the shows don't usually start until around 1am.
For some closer-to-home action, there is always the Elite League in the UK, which is the national equivalent of the world-famous NHL. The quality is certainly not on a par with the league in the United States, but it fills the gap for those craving some live ice hockey action.
Elite League ice hockey in the UK:
http://www.eliteleague.co.uk/
http://www.britishicehockey.co.uk/
The NHL: http://www.nhl.com/
Alistair Potter