Hockey is a fast-paced and exciting sport with its own set of rules and unique terminology. Whether you're a seasoned fan or new to the game, understanding these aspects can greatly enhance your appreciation of the sport. Let's delve into some of the key elements that define hockey.
Home-Ice Advantage
Home-ice advantage describes the benefit that the home team is said to gain over the visiting team. This benefit has been attributed to psychological effects supporting fans have on the competitors or referees; to psychological or physiological advantages of playing near home in familiar situations; to the disadvantages away teams suffer from changing time zones or climates, or from the rigors of travel; and in some sports, to specific rules that favor the home team directly or indirectly.
In most team sports, the home or hosting team is considered to have a significant advantage over the visitors. Due to this, many important games (such as playoff or elimination matches) in many sports have special rules for determining what match is played where.
In many team sports in North America (including baseball, basketball, and ice hockey), playoff series are often held with a nearly equal number of games at each team's site. The strength of the home advantage varies for different sports, regions, seasons, and divisions. For all sports, it seems to be strongest in the early period after the creation of a new league.
There are many causes that attribute to home advantage, such as crowd involvement, travel considerations, and environmental factors. The most commonly cited factors of home advantage are usually factors which are difficult to measure and so even their existence is debated. The stadium or arena will typically be filled with home supporters, who are sometimes described as being as valuable as an extra player for the home team.
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The home fans can sometimes create a psychological lift by cheering loudly for their team when good things happen in the game. The home crowd can also intimidate visiting players by booing, whistling, or heckling. Generally the home fans vastly outnumber the visiting team's supporters.
While some visiting fans may travel to attend the game, home team fans will generally have better access to tickets and easier transport to the event, thus in most cases they outnumber the visitors' fans (although in local derbies and crosstown rivalries this may not always be the case). In addition, stadium/arena light shows, sound effects, fireworks, cheerleaders, and other means to enliven the crowd will be in support of the home team.
Sometimes the unique attributes of a stadium create a home-field advantage. Cherry Hill Arena, a New Jersey-based arena in the southern suburbs of Philadelphia, had a number of idiosyncrasies that its home teams used to their advantage but earned the arena an extremely poor reputation, including a slanted ice surface that forced opponents to skate the majority of the game uphill and lack of showers for the visiting team.
The 2019-20 and 2020-21 NHL seasons saw major disruption due to COVID-19-restricted conditions that resulted in bubble playoffs (during the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs and ghost games during the 2020-21 NHL season, as fans were unable to attend in person until either into March or into the playoffs. New research has shown that this led to a significant drop to home advantage compared with the previous six seasons.
In 592 games played under the restricted conditions through March, home teams suffered a decline of 10% while road teams’ win rates increased by 7%. The first is referred to as "last change", where during stoppages of play, the home team is allowed to make player substitutions after the visiting team does. This allows the home team to obtain favorable player matchups.
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Traditionally, the second advantage was that when lining up for the face-off, the away team's centre always had to place his stick on the ice before the centre of the home team. However, in both the NHL and international rule sets, this now applies only for face-offs at the centre-ice spot; when a face-off takes place anywhere else on the ice, the defending centre has to place his stick first.
However, in the playoffs, home advantage is usually given to the team with the higher seed (which may or may not have the better record), as is case in the NFL, MLB, and NHL playoffs. One exception to this was MLB's World Series, which between 2003 and 2016, awarded home-field advantage to the team representing the league which won the All-Star Game that year, to help raise interest in the All-Star Game after a tie in 2002 (before 2003, home-field advantage alternated each year between the National League and the American League).
The NBA is the only league that has home-court advantage based solely on which team has the best record (using various tiebreakers to settle the question should the teams finish with identical records). In many sports, playoffs consist of a 'series' of games played between two teams. These series are usually a best-of-5 or best-of-7 format, where the first team to win 3 or 4 games, respectively, wins the playoff.
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Since these best-of series always involve an odd number of games, it is impossible to guarantee that an equal number of games will be played at each team's home venue. As a result, one team must be scheduled to have one more home game than the other. During the course of these playoff series, however, sports announcers or columnists will sometimes mention a team "gaining" or "losing" home-field advantage.
This can happen after a visiting team has just won a game in the series. In playoff series format, the home-field advantage is said to exist for whichever team would win the series if all remaining games in the series are won by the home team for that game. Therefore, it is possible for a visiting team to win a game and, hence, gain home-field advantage.
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As part of a settlement for a 1992 strike by the NHL Players Association, the National Hockey League scheduled two neutral-site games for each team in a non-NHL market, with one as designated home team and one as the designated road team. The neutral site games ended after the 1993-94 NHL season, as the following season was lockout-shortened, and the 1995-96 NHL season reduced the regular season from 84 to 82 games per team.
The NHL has held neutral-site, season-opening games in Europe (sometimes also including preseason exhibitions against European clubs), first from 2007 to 2011 as the NHL Premiere, and from 2017 as the NHL Global Series.
In the 2019 Stanley Cup Playoffs, for the first time in NHL history all division winners (who had home-ice advantage) were eliminated in the first round as all the wild-cards advanced to the second round. The Columbus Blue Jackets won a playoff series for the first time, defeating the first-place Lightning in four games, and marking the first time in Stanley Cup playoff history that the Presidents' Trophy winners were swept in the opening round, and the first time since 2012 that the Presidents' Trophy winners were defeated in the opening round.
They were soon followed by the Calgary Flames, who with their five-game loss to the Colorado Avalanche, ensured that for the first time in NHL history, neither of the conference number one seeds advanced to the second round.
Common Hockey Terms and Penalties
Understanding the jargon used in hockey can help you follow the game more closely. Here's a glossary of common terms and penalties:
- Assist (A): When a player helps to set up a goal for his team via a pass, deflection, or any other means of playing the puck.
- Plus/Minus (+/-): A statistic used to determine how many goals a player was on the ice for, both for and against their team.
- Goal Crease: The blue painted area that the goaltender is entitled to on the ice.
- Icing: When a defending team clears the puck down past the opponents' goal line and wide of the net from behind the center ice red line. A player from the clearing team must beat all opponents to the offensive zone faceoff dot to "cancel" the icing.
- Offside: The puck must be the first thing to enter the offensive zone.
- Penalty Kill: The act of a team trying to prevent a power play goal by the opponent following a penalty they committed.
- Power Play: When a team has a man advantage as a result of an opponents' penalty.
- Shootout: After overtime is played, if a game remains tied, a shootout commences, in which teams send out three shooters each to take penalty shots. The team that scores the most in 3 rounds wins.
Penalties
- Double Minor: Normally reserved for high sticking infractions where a player's high stick has drawn blood or an injury to an opponent. Incurs a four minute penalty.
- Goaltender Interference: the act of an attacking player contacting or impeding a goaltender from being able to play his position.
- Hit from Behind: A check delivered to a player directly from behind, or diagonally from behind.
- Interference: When a player impedes the progress of an opponent who is not in control of the puck and is pursuing the puck.
- Major: A 5-minute penalty that is called (normally for fighting) for an action that, at the referee's discretion, was an attempt to cause injury to an opponent. Sometimes a major also incurs a game misconduct. For non-fighting majors (i.e. one player commits a major penalty such as boarding), the team that commits the penalty has to skate a man down for the duration of the penalty.
- Minor: A two-minute infraction for a penalty that did not cause injury but did impede an opponent from making a play. The offending team has to skate one man short during the duration of the opponents' two-minute power play.
- Misconduct: A player may be given a misconduct (not to be confused with a game misconduct), which is a 10-minute penalty that does not affect man power (i.e. if a player earns a misconduct while the teams are skating 5 on 5, the game remains 5 on 5 after the penalty begins to be served).
- Penalty Shot: When a player is tripped, hooked, or impeded on a breakaway in a way that prevents him from getting a good shot or scoring chance off, he is awarded a penalty shot.
- Roughing: When minor altercations or scuffles, i.e.
- Tripping: When a player trips an opponent with his stick, skate or any part of his body.
- Unsportsmanlike Conduct: Any action deemed to be unsportsmanlike or not tolerated on the playing surface.
These rules and terms provide a foundation for understanding and enjoying the game of hockey. Whether you're watching a professional match or participating in a local stick and puck session, knowing the rules and etiquette is essential for a safe and enjoyable experience.