A Brief Introduction to the Sport of Ice Hockey




Ryan Hoadley, an analyst with the New York-based hedge fund Newbrook Capital Advisors, is responsible for performing analyses of equities and companies in the hopes of finding long-term investment opportunities. When he is not working, Ryan Hoadley enjoys staying active through skiing, running, and playing ice hockey.

Though the exact origin of ice hockey is uncertain, the sport as it is currently known was created around the 1850s in Canada. Within twenty years of the first recorded ice hockey games, students at a Canadian university created the first rules for playing ice hockey, changing the game to use a puck rather than a ball. Since then, the sport has grown to become widely popular in Canada, America, Finland, and other places that are often cold. Due to its popularity, the sport has even been established as a part of the Olympics.

The basic goal of ice hockey is to use sticks to get the puck into the goal of the opposing team. With five players and a goalie on each team, the players try to maintain control of the puck while moving it across the ice and into the opposing team’s net. While contact in the sport is allowed, there are several rules of fairness to determine whether certain conduct is legal within the game or not. When players violate any of the rules of conduct, they are penalized and removed from the game for a certain amount of time, during which their team will be short a player. The equipment needed to play ice hockey is relatively basic, requiring safety padding, a stick, puck, net, and ice skates. Through safety padding is not technically needed to play the sport, it is still important to help protect various areas of the body from injury.