Ice hockey
Ice hockey is a sport that is played by two teams on ice. The players wear ice skates on their feet and can travel at very high speeds. They hold hockey sticks, which they use to push or pass a puck around the ice. The players score by shooting the puck into a net; the goaltenders try to stop them. Six players on each team play at once, but a whole team has over 20 players. When a player breaks a rule, a referee calls a penalty, and the player has to sit in a penalty box. While the player sits in the penalty box, his team has to play without him, and will have fewer players on the ice until the penalty is over.
Ice hockey is very well-known and well-liked in Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic, the United States, Latvia and Slovakia. Most of the best players in the world play in the National Hockey League (NHL), which has 30 teams in the United States and Canada. They try to win the Stanley Cup at the end of the year. Another popular hockey league is the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL), which has teams in Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Belarus, and Slovakia. In North America, women play in the Canadian Women's Hockey League and the Western Women's Hockey League. In North America and Europe, men's hockey is much more popular than women's hockey. Hockey is played by both men and women at the Olympic games, and at world championships. Ice hockey began in Canada in the 19th century.There are two types of penalty: The major and the minor. The minor is the main one who the referee will call during a game and the players have to go in the penalty box for two minutes. The major is when players fight together or when someone did something very dangerous. Most of time players are kicked out of the games but in a fight they only get 5 minutes in the penalty box. In the National Hockey League (NHL) there are four referees. Two lineman and two head referee. Only head referees can call the penalty. They can be recognizing by the orange armband on their arm. In the major league, the game is separating in three periods of 20 min. for the minor league the time can be different for each categories. Each period starts after the face-off. A face-off is when two teams are in position in around the face-off circle than the referee drop the puck between players who play centers. There are 6 different positions: Center, right wing, left wing, right defense, left defense and goalie. The play is over after a whistle of any referee than the time stop running. Each team can have a maximum of 20 players, including two goaltenders and they have a zone to defend. In each teams they have one captain and two or three assistant captain. The ice is separated in three zones. Each zone is delimited by lines: the center is between two blue lines and team zones is between one blue line and the end of the ice. The lineman can whistle for two reasons: for an icing and an offside. An icing is when a player throw the puck in the zone before he cross the red line (center line) and an offside is when a player are in the zone before the one who have the puck enter with it.
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