By Lily Bourne
Josie Todd, plant aficionado and track extraordinaire, has a hidden passion. Returning home from a long day of Ag Gov and Human Anatomy, Josie tunes in to her favorite entertainment: the NHL. In an attempt to educate me, a hockey “dummy”, and allow others to enjoy her impassioned rants, Josie has laid out the basics of the NHL, its rules, and its most important people.
How does a hockey game work?
Every hockey game is three periods, each of them are 20 minutes, and then there’s intermissions between every period. If the game doesn’t finish in regulation time, it goes into overtime, and then a shootout. Overtime is 3 on 3, so 3 players and the goalies. Regulation time is 5 on 5 so 6 players including the goalies. If they are still tied in overtime there will be a shootout with one player against the goalie until someone wins. That will go on because there are no ties. The basic set-up of the team is that there are four lines and around twenty players. Usually a team will have a main goalie and one or two backups. The lines are combinations of players, like the starting lineup, and then second, third, and fourth. There are three forwards and two defensemen and the goalie on the ice at one time. Whenever the teams go into overtime, the game stats go into a separate category. There’s a column for wins, a column for losses, and a column for overtime. A team is awarded two points for winning and one point for overtime whether they win or lose. A win in overtime doesn’t mean much, only that more goals get added to the team’s record.
Are there any specific rules?
Hockey has a lot of similar rules to soccer, like offsides. There’s a unique rule called icing. Basically, if all players are behind the middle red line and the defensive team hits the puck all the way past the red line behind the opposite goal, the puck will be turned over to the other team.
What are the circles?
The middle blue circle is where the faceoff happens at the beginning of each period. The two red circles in each defensive zone are where other faceoffs are held.
How do penalties work?
There’s a lot of fights. There’s usually a few people on the team called ‘enforcers’ that will get in fights if the other team hits a rookie or starts a problem. That causes the five-minute penalties which are major penalties. Other penalties are usually two minutes and can be issued for high-sticking, when players play the puck above shoulder height, or slashing, when players intentionally hit opponents with their stick.
Who are the important teams to know?
There’s 32 teams in the NHL. The league is divided into the West and East Conferences. The West is split into the Pacific and Central divisions, while the East is split into the Atlantic and Metropolitan divisions. As of now, the Florida Panthers are first in the Atlantic, but the best team in the league currently is the Winnipeg Jets since they’ve only lost one game. The Vegas Golden Knights, who are first in the Pacific (the division the Sharks are in), are also interesting since they’re a relatively new team and have won 9 out of 13 games this season. In recent hockey news, there was a team in Arizona called the Arizona Coyotes that were having a lot of financial problems and weren’t very good, so they moved to Utah and are now called the Utah Hockey Club.
So how are the Sharks?
So the Sharks are not very good. They’re actually second to last in the league. They are playing as we speak…they are in fact losing 4-1. They’ve played 14 games and they’ve lost 8 of them. They have 8 points from wins and 2 points from overtimes, which is not great compared to the top teams which have around 20 points right now. They were really good circa 2016 but now…not so much. They have some really good draft picks though, so they’re getting some youngins to hopefully improve the team.
Who are the most important players?
The Shark’s most recent draft pick was Macklin Celebrini, who was the consensus overall first pick of the draft last year. He was one of the youngest players and played one season of college hockey. His family lives in Willow Glen and he played for the Junior Sharks as a kid, so he’s very local. He scores a lot of points and he’s a very good player. Connor McDavid is one of the other most well-known hockey players. He was another consensus first draft pick a few years ago (and Lily Bourne drafted Connor McDavid first round, securing her fantasy hockey victory). He is one of the best players, he’s always in the all-star games, he has some of the greatest shooting skills. His team, the Edmonton Oilers, were in the Stanley Cup last year but they didn’t win. Austin Matthews is one of the forwards for the Toronto Maple Leaves. He originally grew up in Arizona and he was really important for Arizona hockey, he was a role model for a lot of kids in his state. He scored 69 goals last year! He’s definitely one of the best forwards in the league and the Maple Leaves have been in the playoffs like every year but they always get eliminated. Everyone feels bad for him because he’s a good player and his team kind of sucks. He’s had a lot of injuries so he was out for a good chunk of the season and that’s a constant worry that his team has, that he will keep getting injured and never play a full season again.