NHL lockout leaves time to learn men's hockey's rules

Despite the trilogy of Mighty Ducks movies that emerged in the early '90s, there is a good possibility that the casual sports fan born in America does not know much about the sport of ice hockey, a sport popularized in Canada and abroad that is not currently being played this year at the professional level in the United States.

Rodney Dangerfield once said, "I went to a fight the other night and a hockey game broke out." Hockey, a mix between the grace of figure skating and the violence of football, has been criticized by some and praised by others for being one of the most physical sports.

Those on the inside tend to have a different perspective.

"What makes hockey special is that it is the fastest team sport," men's hockey head coach Guy Gadowsky said. "One must rely on his instincts rather than just the X's and O's."

Sophomore Grant Goeckner-Zoeller sees hockey as similar to many other sports with regard to hand-eye coordination, endurance, and physical contact. Hockey players, however, "have to do it while balancing on a blade which is only a couple of centimeters wide."

As the players have gotten stronger and faster over the years, the equipment worn by hockey players has evolved from wool sweaters and leather boots to Kevlar padding and polycarbonate plastic helmets.

The rules and regulations of the sport, however, have stayed relatively static over time. An ice hockey game is 60 minutes long split into three 20-minute periods. If there is a tie after 60 minutes of play, a five minute overtime period is played. If the teams remain deadlocked after five minutes, the game ends in a tie. Each team keeps six skaters on the ice at a time. Princeton plays a scheme with three forwards and two defensemen who rotate into the game in shifts lasting between half a minute and two minutes in duration.

Another notable difference between hockey and the other major sports are the colored markings on the ice. A red center line divides the rink into two halves and a red goal line (so called because the front of the goal sits on this line) runs across the rink about 10 feet from each end. A blue line, in between the red goal line and the red center line presents the boundary of each team's defensive zone. In a word, the three colored lines on the ice divide the rink into each team's zone.

There are two basic rules regarding how you can advance the puck into the other team's zone. First, in order to enter the offensive zone, the puck must enter the zone before any of the players do. Second, one cannot hit the puck the entire length of the ice from one's own side of the ice without someone touching it in the offensive zone. If this happens, 'icing' is called and a face-off ensues.

Face-offs take place when penalties occur, after goals are scored, at the start of each period, or when the puck is hit out of the rink. The centers on each team face off at the location assigned by the referee and the other skaters on the team are not allowed within 15 feet of the face-off circle. The centers fight for possession of the puck using their sticks, bodies, and feet.

In order to score a goal, the entire puck must cross the goal line. The puck, however, can neither be hit into the net by a player's glove nor deliberately kicked in to the net with a skate. It can inadvertantly deflect in off a player. Additionally, a player can not hit the puck with his stick above the crossbar of the net — the basis for the high-sticking penalty.

High-sticking is one of the many penalties that the linesmen and referees call during the course of a game. In college ice hockey, penalties last for two minutes or five minutes and leave the offending team one player short for that time resulting in a power play for the opposing team.

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Common infractions include offsides (when a player has both skates across the blue line before the puck) tripping, hooking (using the curved blade of the stick to hold back an opponent), slashing (hitting an opponent with one's stick) and elbowing.

Aside from the aforementioned penalties, the penalty shot, most commonly caused by a player being pulled down by a defenseman on a breakaway, is often referred to as the most exciting play in hockey. The penalty shot is a one-on-one breakaway between the player and the goalie in which the player gets only one shot on goal.

In the next installment of Hockey 101: the arts of the power-play and the penalty kill.