Portal:Ice hockey

Ice hockey, referred to simply as hockey in Canada, the United States, and most of Europe including Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Czech Republic, is a team sport played on ice. It is one of the world's fastest sports, with players on skates capable of going high speeds on natural or artificial ice surfaces. Though played on six continents, ice hockey, as a participatory and as a spectator sport, is most popular in nations in which the climate is sufficiently cold as to permit natural, long-term seasonal ice cover; Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Slovakia, Sweden, Russia, and the United States have dominated international competition, claiming 47 of the 48 gold and silver medals awarded in the men's and women's competitions at the Olympic Winter Games.

Ice hockey is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented at the highest level by the National Hockey League. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where seven of the 32 NHL franchises are based; Canadian-born players, though, outnumber American-born players in the NHL by a factor of three (30 per cent, additionally, come from outside North America).

The sport is played on a hockey rink. During normal play, there are six players, five positional players and one goaltender, per team on the ice at any time, each of whom is on ice skates. The objective of the game is to score goals by shooting a hard vulcanized rubber disc, the puck, into the opponent's goal net, with the goal nets placed at opposite ends 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 generally redirect the puck with any part of their bodies, but the kicking of the puck into the goal is prohibited.

• ... that Pete Muldoon (pictured), after he was fired after only one season in 1927 by the Chicago Blackhawks, supposedly placed an Irish curse that would prevent the Blackhawks from being first for the next 41 years?
• ...that the Los Angeles Kings have appeared three times in the Stanley Cup Finals during their 50-year existence, and won it in 2012 and 2014?
• ...that the Edmonton Oilers have appeared in the Stanley Cup Finals seven times since they joined the NHL in 1979, winning five times?
• ...that the Avco World Trophy, the championship trophy of the now-defunct World Hockey Association, was not completed when the New England Whalers won the WHA championship in 1973?
• ...that the Scotiabank Saddledome is the home of the Calgary Flames?