If football is dubbed the King sport of the Summer Olympics, ice hockey also occupies a similar position during the Winter Olympics.

Long-standing origin

There are many theories about the advent of hockey but so far the majority still believe that this sport comes from an ancient Greek game called “keritizein”. From the end of the 18th century, hockey was gradually improved by the British until it became a unified whole as the present.

According to the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) regulations, the standard game field must meet the basic requirement of size 60.98x30m. The rules of playing ice hockey are quite simple with each 6-player team using skateboard sticks (made of wood, aluminum or synthetic plastic) to hit the ball into the opponent’s net. Each match lasts 60 minutes. Also, the match is divided equally into 3 rounds without time off. The team that takes the ball into the opponent’s net more will win. The big difference between hockey versus football is that there is no time limit and the number of substitutions in each game. Half-time breaks last from 15 minutes 30 seconds to 17 minutes.

First appeared at the Summer Olympics

Ice hockey first appeared in the 1920s Summer Olympics in Belgium. This test was then transferred to the winter sports system starting from the 2004 Winter Olympics and defaulted to the latest Olympic Games in Sochi, Russia in 2014.

Seven countries are considered the great powers of ice hockey in the Olympic arena. They are Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden, and the United States. For ice hockey for men, only 6/64 medals do not belong to one of these seven countries. The women’s playground, the Olympic medal competition, and the World Championship are always the battles of this giants group.

The most common of ice hockey is still in the geographic areas cold enough to form seasonal ice with perfect hardness like Canada, Czech, Latvia, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland.

Some countries like Canada and other European countries officially choose ice hockey as a national winter sport. The professional tournaments in North America such as the National Hockey League (NHL), the Women’s Federation in Canada (CWHL) … have become increasingly popular, attracting tens of thousands of people to the yard, hundreds of thousands of followers via television and is as pervasive as football.