Learn about Ice Hockey from a Canadian

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to www.engvid.com.

I'm Adam.

In today's video, I'm going to talk to you about the beautiful game of hockey, ice hockey.

Now, I know that some of you might not be very interested in sports or in this particular

sport, but you should watch anyway because it's good listening practice, plus some of

the words that are used in sports are also used in everyday situations.

In North American culture especially, we use a lot of sports analogies.

We talk a lot about sports situations and apply them to everyday life, so it's good

to know.

And this is especially true for baseball and football, but those are different videos.

Today, we're talking about hockey.

Now, for those of you who are thinking about coming to Canada, it's really important that

you know at least a little bit about hockey because in Canada, hockey is almost a religion.

People love hockey in this country, and if you're living in a city that has a hockey

team in Canada and the team is doing well, everybody will be talking about it.

And when you go to a bar, it will be on all the TVs, and when you go to a club, it'll

be on the TVs, and when you go to dinner parties, people will talk about hockey.

So, it's a good idea to know at least a little bit about it.

So, I'm going to give you very basics.

I'm not going to get too deep into the details because you have to be a fan to follow it,

but this will give you at least a basic understanding.

So, let's start with the rink.

So, that's what we call the play surface.

It's all ice, right?

Cleaned ice and controlled ice.

It's called a rink, and the whole building is called a stadium, okay?

Or even arena.

I guess it depends where you call...

Different cities will call it a little bit different, but stadium or arena is okay.

The playing surface is a rink.

Now, in...

What I'm...

Mostly what I'm going to focus on is the NHL.

This is the National Hockey League.

This is the best hockey league for hockey in the world.

There are other leagues.

There are leagues in Europe, leagues in Scandinavia, in Russia.

In fact, Russia...

The Russian league, the KHL, Continental Hockey League, is the second biggest league in the

world.

But, generally speaking, the best hockey players in the world come play in the NHL because

it's the top level of the sport.

So, an NHL rink is about 200 feet long.

It's much narrower.

So, if you've ever watched hockey, like Olympic hockey or international hockey, the rink looks

much bigger than an NHL rink.

And it is.

NHL is smaller, which means you need a lot more skill.

It's a much faster game.

It's a much more exciting game, to be honest.

But...

So, this is what the rink looks like.

You have the red line, which is the center ice line, and you have two blue lines, which

are called the, basically, offside line, and you have a zone.

You have...

For example, depends on which side your team is playing on, defensive zone, neutral zone,

and offensive zone.

So, if your team is playing this way, this is their defensive zone, and this is their

offensive zone.

Okay.

Now, what happens...

At the beginning, all the players, they basically stand around the center line, and the referee

drops the puck.

Now, the puck is basically a round and flat disc.

It's made of rubber.

It's very, very, very hard because it's frozen.

So, it's like a rock, but because it's rubber, it slides easily on the ice.

But if a player gets hit with a puck in the face, it could be very, very dangerous.

So, hockey is a very dangerous sport, and players get injured a lot and often.

But we'll talk about that in a second.

So, the game is made up of three periods.

It's a one-hour game, usually takes about two and a half to three hours to actually

play.

Each period is about 20 minutes, is 20 minutes, and between the first and second period and

the second and third period are two intermissions of 15 minutes each.

If after all three periods are complete and the score is tied, like 1-1 or 0-0, then the

players will play a five-minute overtime.

And this is a sudden death overtime.

Sudden death means as soon as a team scores, the game's over.

They don't play the full five minutes if someone scores.

If nobody scores after five minutes, then they will go to a shootout, and they will

just take turns shooting on each other until one team scores more goals.

Okay?

So, that's basically the setup of the game.

Now, the players include three forwards for each side.

Three forwards, they're called a "center", a "right wing", and a "left wing" depending

on where they play on the ice; two "defencemen", and one "goaltender", but usually we just

say "goalie".

We don't say the full word, so "goalie".

So, six players on each side.

So, as you can imagine, it's a very crowded rink, so you have to have a lot of skill and

a lot of speed, and a lot of hitting, which I'll get to in a second as well.

Also on the ice are three referees.

Two of them are called "linesmen" because they make sure that the players don't go offside.

It means...

Offside means that the player went into the zone before the puck.

That's not allowed.

The puck must enter first, then the players can come.

So, the linesmen make sure that happens.

The referee makes sure that everybody's playing by the rules.

And of course, there's a coach.

Now, the players will sit here.

There are two benches, one bench for each team, and this is where they make their shifts.

So, players come on, players come off, on and off, on and off.

Now, because this is such an intensive game, they're just going, going, going all the time,

skating, they get very tired.

So, a player will come on the ice, play for one minute, and then get off the ice and somebody

else will come.

So, usually, each team will play four lines of forwards.

So, three forwards go on, they come off, another three go on, they come off, another three,

so everybody can rest between shifts.

Very, very intensive game.

And of course, there's the coach sitting on the bench as well.

Now, the point of this game is to get goals.

You want to score goals on the opposing team's goalie.

So, you can get a goal or you can get an assist.

An assist is when you pass the puck to the person who scores the goal.

Then you get an assist, and the players get individual points for their goals and assists.

Then there is something called a "penalty".

If you break a rule, if you break one of the rules of the game, then you will get a penalty.

A "penalty" means that you will get off the ice, and you will sit here in the penalty

box for two minutes, or four minutes, or five minutes.

If the penalty is really, really bad, if what you did was really bad, you will simply be

kicked out of the game, and you will go to the dressing room and wait for the game to

be finished.

Now, what happens when there's a penalty?

So, one player from the team that broke the rules comes off the ice.

That means that one team has five skaters, and one team has four skaters.

So, this is called a "power play".

The team that wasn't penalized has a little bit extra power, they can do...

They can have a bit more advantage in the game.

Power play is an everyday word as well.

If somebody is trying a power play, they're trying to overcome their opponent.

In business, we use this expression a lot.

So, it's a power play move, means the company is trying to take advantage of a weakness

in a competitor, or they're trying to overpower their competitor.

The team that sent a player to the penalty box is now playing shorthanded, means they

have one less pair of hands, right?

And this word is also used in everyday situations.

In a company that's very busy, let's say one employee calls in sick, so for that day, the

workers are shorthanded.

Everybody has to work a little bit harder to make up for the missing person, for the

missing pair of hands, so used in everyday situations as well.

So, the power play is supposed to give one team the advantage to get extra goals.

And the point of the game is to get more goals than your opponent, and then you win the game.

Now, if you win enough games, then you get to go to the playoffs.

Now, in the NHL right now, there are 31 teams, 16 teams, so basically half, go on to the

playoffs, and the point of the playoffs is to try, in each series, you try to win a best

of seven series, which means you have to win four games out of seven in order to continue

to the next series.

If you continue to the next series, and then the next series, and the next series, then

you get to the finals, and the winner of the final game of the season wins the Stanley

Cup.

This is the trophy that the hockey players get, and they raise it over their heads, and

they get their names on it, and it's every child...

Every hockey player's dream to lift up the Stanley Cup, okay?

It has a very long tradition.

This sport is over 100 years old.

This cup was there from the beginning, so if you're a hockey player, a professional

hockey player, this is your ultimate goal, to get this cup and bring it back to your

city and make everybody proud.

They also say that this Stanley Cup is the most difficult trophy to achieve in all of

sports.

Harder than baseball, harder than basketball, harder than football.

You have to win 16 games in the playoffs to win the Stanley Cup, and this is a very difficult

thing to do.

Now, in terms of equipment, basically everything happens on ice, so the players are wearing

ice skates, they're using sticks, and they're playing around with a puck.

Now, if you watch a game, you'll see that these are all very big boys, right?

But they have a lot of padding, because if the puck hits you and you're not protected,

you don't have padding, it's very, very painful.

This puck is like a rock.

Also, sometimes the sticks fly around, so if a stick hits you and you don't have padding,

it could be very painful.

Also, the skates, the blades, the metal blades of the skates are very, very sharp.

It has happened, not once or twice, but quite a few times, that a player falls over and

the skate goes up in the air.

I remember there was one game where a skate cut a goalie in the neck, and he was, like,

bleeding everywhere, and he almost died, but he was okay.

But it's a very, very dangerous sport.

Now, around the rink, these are the...

Basically, the walls of the rink are called the boards, and there's big pieces of glass

so the puck doesn't fly into the stands and hit the fans.

So, one of the things they do is they body check.

A body check means that you hit your opponent to try to get him off the puck, or to slow

him down, or basically just to help your team get motivated.

So, there's a lot of ways to get injured.

Now, even with all the injuries, and that's a hard sport, it's a long season, 82 games

in a season, these players, some of the top players make, like, 10 or 11 million dollars

per year to play this game, which is very little when you think about football players

and baseball players, and soccer players especially.

Baseball players can make 20, 30, 40 million dollars a year.

So, 11 million for the top player in hockey, not so much.

Okay?

Now, if you enjoyed some of this stuff and you were a little bit more interested, the

best way to learn is to watch a hockey game.

And if you watch a hockey game, especially on Canadian television, there's always somebody

called a color commentator.

Color means, like, the actual color, because he adds color to the explanation.

The color commentators explain everything.

And I know that for a lot of people, it's very difficult to follow the puck on the TV

screen because it's so small.

The more you watch, the easier it becomes to see the puck, understand the rules, see

what's going on, learn who are the best players, etc.

And if you're wondering who the best player is, like, the GOAT, the greatest of all time,

he doesn't play anymore, he's retired, but it was Wayne Gretzky.

He was a Canadian hockey player.

He was the best.

He's still considered the best ever, but of course, he retired, now there's other very

good players playing this game.

Now, personally, this is my favorite sport to watch on TV.

It's a great sport once you understand it.

I know a lot of people love soccer.

Soccer personally puts me to sleep, because you can play for, like, two hours and nothing

happens.

No goals, no nothing, and everybody's on the ground crying because somebody flicked them,

right?

So, I don't really understand that.

But hockey, fast, tough, great game.

I highly recommend it, especially if you're coming to Canada or some of the...

Obviously, in the States, they play a lot.

In some cities, nobody cares.

In other cities, like if you go to New York or Boston, they're very proud of their hockey

tradition, so you should know a little bit about hockey there as well.

And that's it.

Like, again, I don't want to get too deep into it, just give you a general understanding

of the game.

If you have any questions, please go to www.engvid.com and you can ask me there in the comments section.

There's also going to be a little bit of a quiz to make sure you understand some of the

points I made here.

And that's it.

I hope you liked the video.

If you did, please give me a like.

Don't forget to subscribe to my channel and ring the bell for notifications.

And come back, I'll give you some more explanations of other important cultural aspects that go

along with the English aspects you need to learn.

Okay?

Until then, bye-bye.