Listen to this post written by, Marco Martins.

You lace up your skates, slip on your gloves, grab your hockey stick and slide onto the ice. You see the puck traveling toward you. It hits your stick, and suddenly you’re racing to the goal. Your blades cut into the ice as you rough your way through defensive tackles. Your moment arrives. You draw your stick back and…strike!

The puck travels through the air, passes the goalie, and punctures the back of the net. You feel the joy of success surge through you as your teammates surround you.

You could be experiencing this all from playing ice hockey. So, let’s learn a little more about this “cool” sport.

The History of Ice Hockey

Ice hockey is one of the oldest games in history. Proof of the early forms of the game has been found all over Europe, as far back as 2,000 years ago. The game of ice hockey comes from an old Canadian game called Shinny. It was from Shinny that ice hockey got most of its characteristics.

What You’ll Need to Play

Gear in ice hockey is essential. Here are the items you’ll need to play:

•       Helmet
•       Gloves
•       Stick
•       Puck
•       Skates
•       Padding

How to Play – The Basics

Only six players are allowed on the ice at a time. These players include a goalie, who stops the other team from scoring. Your mission is to get the puck into the opposing team’s goal and to prevent the other side from doing the same to you.

You have three periods, each lasting twenty minutes, to do this.

While you only have six people on the ice, there are twenty players on the team. These players include twelve forwards, six defenders, and two goalies.  The team manager is allowed to rotate these players when he or she wants.

A Few Rules to Remember

Like just about every other sport, hockey has referees and linesman to uphold the rules. Two of the most important rules are Offside and Icing.

You’re offside when you go ahead of the puck when you’re attacking. The offside rule stops players from lazily waiting by the opponent’s goal to score.

Icing is when a team tries to get the puck out of play, by hitting it away.

What’s In It For You? – What You Could Get Out of Playing Ice Hockey

Ice hockey is a great sport, teaching you balance, dynamic speed, and control. It’ll also teach you to toughen up through all the knocks you’ll take, because in ice hockey, tackling is allowed. Best of all, you learn how to be part of a team, sharing in joys of victory and the learnings that come from losses.

The Mighty Ducks – A Movie All About Ice Hockey

And finally, if you’d like to learn more about Ice Skating, there’s a great movie that you could watch all about it. The Mighty Ducks is a movie released in 1992 that inspired people to learn more about ice hockey. It’s a great story, and it’ll teach you a lot about the game itself.

So, what are you waiting for? Grab some skates, a stick, and hit the ice for some real team fun!

What do you think about hockey? Have you ever played this game? Tell us in the comments section.