All about Sport

Archive for the ‘Hockey’ Category

Women’s hockey has made a place for itself in the last twenty years. It has become an accepted and well-played sport in a number of countries, from the US and Canada to Europe and down to Australia. The first women’s international hockey tournament was in the year 1916 in Ohio, between teams from Canada and the United States. This continued through the years until the middle 1970s when Europe and Korea, Japan, and China started participating in international hockey tournaments. A number of women’s teams at various levels tour other countries, with teams of teenage girls playing a number of exhibition games in Switzerland, Australia, and other locations. National teams at the professional level also gain experience and publicity by doing hockey exchanges, often organized by USA Hockey. The US Women’s Select Team has done tours to Finland, Sweden, China, etc.

Women’s hockey is earmarked by fast skating, remarkable stickhandling, swift passing, good puck protection, accurate shooting, and quick goaltending. It is exciting hockey, and cleanly demonstrates the pure principles of hockey. In the 1990s there was some dispute whether bodychecking should be allowed in the international championships for women’s hockey. It had been disallowed in both the US and Canada in order for the size difference to become less of an issue, so that smaller or younger players would not be overpowered physically, and be able to use their skills. Europe allows it, and bodychecking would also let the European teams slow down the faster skating US and Canadian players.

Since the early 1970s, the American Girls Hockey Association has lobbied to have women’s ice hockey included as an Olympic event. There were many discussions on the issue, due to several real problems. The first was the difference between European and American rules, such as the bodychecking rule above. Another was the worry that the different countries did not have enough participants in women’s ice hockey, that the same few teams would not have enough depth to give really exciting games. Finally, women’s ice hockey was accepted as an Olympic event for the 1998 Olympics.

How does a girl become a good enough ice hockey player to try out for a national team? The first step for a number of young women is to play minor hockey on a boy’s team. In many novice or peewee leagues, girls are more coordinated than boys of the same age and do quite well on the teams. Another possibility is to have one or two all girls teams and have them play exhibition games until they gain enough experience to join the boy’s hockey league in the area. Girls that live in large cities, especially large northern cities, may have a well established girl’s hockey association ready to recruit and train anyone interested in playing.

Two of the “old stars” of women’s hockey never played on real teams as they were growing up. Shirley Cameron of Canada grew up on a farm, and just skated and played hockey with her brothers on frozen marshes around her farm. Judy Diduck skated but did not start actual ice hockey until she was 19 years old. She became a four time gold medallist with Team Canada.

Women’s hockey is an exciting and skillful game that is both interesting to watch and exciting to participate in.

Thousands of people attend a single hockey match, but there are two matches in hockey that are the top two for a single game. The first match took place on October 6th 2001 for a game commonly known to fans of the University of Michigan and Michigan State University as ‘The Cold War’. This season opener took place at Michigan State’s outdoor Spartan stadium. The university spent $500,000 on a sheet of ice for the rink and the temperature was 30 degrees, and the game drew in a crowd of 74,554 spectators over the 55,000 spectators at the championship game between Sweden and Russia when the game took place in Moscow, but the date is unknown.

The largest single crowd to view an NHL game was during the November 23rd, 2003 Heritage Classic was when 57,163 spectators attended the match between the Montreal Canadians and Edmonton Oilers at Commonwealth stadium in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. Montreal defeated Edmonton 4-3. The only thing that makes this match stand out is that it was the only NHL game played outdoors since all NHL matches are played at indoor rinks. The megastars game which is known as the old timer’s match with former players of the Oilers and the only game that Wayne Gretzky has played since his retirement from professional hockey and insists that the game would be his official and last.

Local hockey games usually don’t draw in the number of people that professional hockey teams can draw in during a single game. That’s because more people are apt to want to attend professional events than a minor league or college/university match since there’s more of a bigger interest in professional sports than a local team unless you’re rooting for your hometown, but on the realistic scale most people find the thrill and excitement bigger for those at professional events. The top two countries with registered hockey players are Canada with 543,390 registered players in the country and the United States comes second with 435,737 registered players.

Slovenia comes in last with 980 registered players so that clearly shows the Canada and the United States are the most popular areas to play hockey since they have the most people registered in each country. Hockey is and always will be the most popular sport in Canada and the United States since it draws in the most crowds because of the unique players the get from other countries since not a lot of Americans are playing professional hockey they’re more likely to play baseball, basketball, and football than professional ice hockey

The only reason being is that ice hockey starts in the fall the same time basketball and football begin so there’s some competition for audience participation and television coverage, but hockey gets their share of loyal viewers and audience attendees. The only team so far that’s having a hard time winning a Stanley cup championship is the Chicago Black hawks since they haven’t won a single championship since 1961 over 40 years ago so they could join the ranks of the other local Chicago pro teams that won championships in the last 35 years. Articles past described Chicago has having the worst record in games and attendance until the team was bought and the new owner had made some changes over time that had turned the attendance deal around, but it still doesn’t stop the fact that the Black hawks have not won a championship since 1961 and barely even made it to the playoffs at the end of the season since they were usually out the first round.

This unique sport of using a stick and a hard rubber puck has pretty unique history going back as far as 17th and 18th century England. In the Irish term it was coined as ‘hockie’, and over time it’s made its way to what it is today. The sport over time had acquired a pretty high charged and chaotic competitive side. Whole villages would play against each other and according to what was noted in history it was an expression of pride and manhood and up to 100 people would participate in the games played. The game would last nearly 2 months and it resulted in many people getting seriously hurt and injured.

The umpire (don’t know why they used this term which is normally addressed in baseball) would only make calls when the team requested the umpire to do so and they were basically mute spectators. Later ‘umpires’ became referees, which is the common term used in the sport of hockey. After a few years and some advancements in the sport with the implementation revising the rules and that’s when it was limited to 30 players per team when modern day NHL hockey teams have a total of 22 players that are sent out in increments of 6 players.

The first real hockey organization kind of like a prototype to what is known as the NHL (National Hockey League) in today’s terms began around 1875 when Eton College had been the originators of the official rules (regulations in NHL speak) to bring order and maintain sanity in the game which was the setting for the modernized rules and regulations that the NHL currently uses to this day. The early form of rules actually drew on the idea of giving the referee more authority to make calls during a game, which made the game a lot more organized and improved the quality of how the game is played. The whole sport of hockey has been through a transformation in terms of how its development is concerned. Fast-forward to today and hockey is played under strict regulations and guidelines, which goes across the board for all the teams in the NHL.

The National Hockey League (NHL) was founded in 1917 so the league has only been active for 100 years as of November 16th, 2007 when the anniversary of its establishment is commemorated. The league actually started with a group of small expansion teams out of Canada, and it wasn’t until the 1920s that the United States had entered the league since the Boston Bruins hosted the Montreal Canadians in the first official game on American soil. Since then the league has grown to a total of 30 pro teams and that doesn’t count the expansion teams that are established and growing as new teams forms over time. The league went through lots of changes beginning with a handful of Canadian teams and it’s since grown into 30 teams across the United States and Canada for the past 100 years.

The teams and their regulations had changed in the last 100 years with new requirements for drafting and regulations throughout the league for each team. Teams today are more likely to recruit new players from colleges, universities, and minor league teams. The way the draft worked before was that they allowed walk-ons and that was more than 25 years ago so standards of the draft has changed since then with the exception is that they don’t accept everyone and records are what play a huge part in the scout’s decision to offer a spot on the team.

Back in 2004 many people rang the bell of doom on the National Hockey League, as it missed a season due to player and management differences. Many people said that a sport that misses a whole season and that emphasized brute strength over skill would never recover. However, in the past few years hockey fans have found much to be pleased with, and teams that are both skillful and entertaining.

When the National Hockey League started up again in 2005 it made several rule changes in order to restructure parts of the game, and to regain hockey fans that loved the skill and finesse of Olympic style hockey games.

The first area they addressed was stricter enforcement of longstanding rules. Any player who uses their stick hand or free hand to slow any opposing player will be penalized. This includes hooking, holding, tripping, cross checking and interference. For several years prior to 2005 there were a number of bear hugs and wrestling matches that were not quickly stopped by a referee, and this slowed down the speed of the game.

The new rules include also added two ways to break a tie that ends a regular game. Five additional minutes are played 4-on-4, and if the game remains tied at the end of those five minutes, a shootout determines the winner. This does make the end of the hockey game much more exciting, except that now the final scores of the game are not as useful a tool to rank different hockey teams. Some fans and NHL officials view this as pandering to the crowd, just to get them excited about their team winning the game.

US professional hockey players once could not pass from their own defensive zone, across the red line at center, and all the way to the opposing blue line. Now that these long passes are allowed, the speed and tactics of the games have changed: there are more quick attacks and less use of the forecheck.

The goalie has less goalie padding, which makes goalies look more like their hockey ancestors of the fifties. Also, goalies before 2005 were able to have a good deal of puck control while in their zone. They could hand it off to a teammate, shoot it out when they got it and make a forward pass. Since there are goaltender interference rules, a goalie could do any of these things without any interference from the other team. Goalies now have very limited puck handling, except in the zone directly behind the net.

Several other changes include moving the blue lines closer together, to be only 50 feet apart, and the ability for players to “tag up” and go back to the blue line so they will not be considered being offside, and eliminating a offside whistle.

These changes have made higher scoring hockey games, and have emphasized the skill and the ice skating speed of the players, rather than their muscles and defensive ability. These changes in the rules have made an even larger fan base that is not put off by the brawling image of earlier NHL hockey games.

Athletes make a lot of money playing hockey for the NHL through endorsements for lots of things from clothes to cars. The problem with a lot of professional athletes is their insatiable need to spend a lot of money. What really is amazing is how they live above and beyond their means when usually the people that spend excessively like that are the ones who haven’t really experienced having money in abundance. Many athletes also make the mistake of making poor business choices and investing their money into things they don’t really do a really full and through amount of research before they hand over the check. Many athletes don’t have smart people working to help protect their money.

Smart investing is what few athletes learn since many of them are not with college degrees and had gone professional before they had the chance to finish their studies. Part of the thing that isn’t emphasized is the importance of having an education because many kids look up to athletes and think that it’s cool to do what they’re doing when you need an education to get anywhere in the world. Some athletes are so corrupted with elements around them from having people telling them about opportunities that are not the best to invest in.

The money that athletes make are not being invested wisely so that they can have money to live on in case their career ends due to injury or retirement. The sad thing is they go from making 7 figures and up to almost nothing. Many well known name athletes have dropped from the scene when they lose everything they have because of poor investments and associations with people who are only interested in hanging out with you only because you’re famous and have money. Real friends are not going to focus primarily on what you have, and they have your best interest at heart. Also people who care about you won’t allow people who are going to bring nothing positive to your life to be around. The problem with most professional athletes is that their egos can get blown up pretty bad mainly due to groupies feeding their egos with things that make no kind of sense. The money is great, but people forget that money can’t always buy you happiness and in a pro athlete’s mind regardless of sport whether it’s baseball or hockey the rules still apply across the board.

The people that they hire are mismanaging their money because of cases where managers were squandering money when they were supposed to be busy paying their client’s bills and expenses. This is where many athletes need to really screen those who handle their money because you got people that aren’t honest and will steal from you and won’t even know it until you start getting notices from creditors or even being sued and that’s the only time athletes have the sense to look over their books when money is missing from their accounts.

The strange thing is that many athletes aren’t aware of what they sign most of the time until they’re really in a clench when they have financial obligations to meet. That’s why most of the time athletes rely on their managers and laywers to do all the decision making when they need to also learn about where their money is going and who they are paying for jobs and services rendered. When athletes are not educated about money and sensible spending they can end up in a position where they won’t have a dime left to their name.