Portal:Ice hockey
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The ice hockey portal
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.
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Trevor Linden, OBC (born April 11, 1970, in Medicine Hat, Alberta) is a retired Canadian professional ice hockey player. He played centre and right wing with four different teams: the Vancouver Canucks (in two stints), New York Islanders, Montreal Canadiens, and Washington Capitals. Before joining the NHL in 1988, Linden captained the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League (WHL) to consecutive Memorial Cup championships. In addition to appearing in two NHL All-Star games, Linden was a member of the 1998 Canadian Olympic team and participated in the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. A respected leader in the NHL, Linden was named captain of the Canucks at age 21, one of the youngest players ever to hold such a role. (more...)
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| “ | How would you like a job where, every time you make a mistake, a red light goes on and 18,000 people boo? | ” |
| — Jacques Plante | ||
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Christoph Schubert of the Ottawa Senators beats the New Jersey Devils' Martin Brodeur in a regular-season game on January 6, 2007. Ottawa and New Jersey met in the playoffs, in the conference semifinals. Ottawa won the series 4–1.
Did you know ...
- ... that Roberto Luongo (pictured) made 72 saves in a 5–4 quadruple overtime win against the Dallas Stars in his first playoff game in the NHL?
- ...that John LeClair had three consecutive 50 goal seasons?
- ...that while Thomas Vanek is the highest drafted Austrian-born player in the NHL, he is of mixed Czech and Slovak descent, moved to the United States in 1998, but represent the Austrian national ice hockey team?
- ...that throwing octopuses during the Detroit Red Wings' playoff runs is a symbol of good luck, which is known as the Legend of the Octopus?
