Ice hockey

Ice hockey is a contact winter team sport that is played on ice skates on a rink that has been specially marked with lines and markings that are distinctive to the game. It is one of the fastest team sports on ice, and it is one of a tiny group of four ice skating team sports, independent of its accompanying varieties, that presently includes bandy, ringette, and rinkball. It is one of the fastest team sports on ice, and it is one of the fastest team sports on ice. While playing ice hockey, both opposition teams control, advance, and shoot a closed vulcanised rubber disc known as a "puck" into the other team's goal using ice hockey sticks, which are termed "sticks." A point is awarded for each goal scored. The winning team is determined by the number of goals scored by each club. Unless there are any penalties called, each side has six skaters on the ice at any one time, with one of them serving as the goalkeeper.

Throughout North America and several European nations, the sport is simply referred to as "hockey" in everyday conversation. However, in many nations, the term "hockey" refers to field hockey, with the exception of certain Northern Russian regions where bandy is still referred to as "Russian hockey" (русски oкке) or "hockey with a ball" (xокке с мом), while ice hockey is referred to as "hockey with a puck" (xокке с ао). Since 1994, the sport of lacrosse has been recognised as the official national summer sport of Canada, with ice hockey serving as the country's official national winter sport. Lacrosse was formerly recognised as the national sport of Canada until 1994, when it was replaced by hockey.

At Canada, the modern sport of ice hockey was developed, most famously in Montreal, where the first indoor game was being played on March 3, 1875, and where it continues today. Some aspects of ancient game, like the length of a ice rink and the usage of a puck, have been carried over to modern-day hockey. The first amateur hockey leagues were established in the 1880s, and the first professional ice hockey teams were formed about 1900. The Stanley Cup, the ultimate symbol of ice hockey club supremacy, was first awarded in 1893 to the Canadian amateur champion and later became the championship trophy of the National Hockey League. It was first commissioned in 1892 as the "Dominion Hockey Challenge Cup" and first awarded in 1893 to recognise the Canadian amateur champion. The Canadian rules were accepted by the Ligue Internationale Hockey Sur Glace in Paris, France, in the early 1900s, which was the forerunner of the International Ice Hockey Federation (now known as the International Ice Hockey Federation) (IIHF). When the 1920 Summer Olympics were held in Los Angeles, the sport was played for the first time at the Games.

Even while women were involved in different early versions of bandy and ice hockey in the late 1800s and early 1900s during the game's formative years, their own successful women's hockey variation of the men's game would not be developed until much later on. Before it could do so, the females non-contact ice skating team sport of ringette, which was established in 1963, exceeded and outperformed it in terms of registrations in Canada. The rising popularity and acceptability of ringette among girls and women in Canada, despite the fact that it was developed from diverse elements borrowed from basketball and other existing floor sports rather than ice hockey, was seen as a danger to the development of female ice hockey. It was not until officials began to formally eliminate body checking from female ice hockey starting in the mid-1980s that the sport began to equal the registration rates found in ringette, which by that time had expanded to Finland and a number of other nations, according to the organisation. The inaugural IIHF Women's World Championship was held in 1990, after the Canadians' decision in 1986 to ban body checking in women's ice hockey games. It wasn't until the new women's no-bodychecking hockey variation (the sport's new official format) was brought into the Olympics in 1998 that registrations for the sport started to expand significantly. As a result of its arrival, unchecked claims that historical sexist discrimination had hampered and stunted the growth of women's ice hockey gained widespread public acceptance, rather than acknowledging the successful efforts of those in Canadian ringette and the successful transformative efforts that had to be made by those in women's hockey to shape the women's game and make it more attractive to female participants.