An Ice hockey game may look as simple as people trying to shoot a black rubber disk inside a net and that is right, but this game is so much more than that. Like any other Contact Team Sport, it has a quite a number of necessary rules. One of the most important is where the game should be played.

One thing that catches the eyes of people new to the game is that there is a relatively small net on the opposite ends. That is what we call the goal post, where the attacking team scores whenever the successfully lands the puck inside.

Before the goal though is a small half-circle area which we call the goal crease. The only one who can move inside this area is the goalkeeper or goalie, giving rise to some exciting movements since the attacking team cannot move inside it.

The area within the blue lines is the neutral zone and the rest of the space is the defending zones for the team that has their goal nearest to it.

The circles on the rink are “faceoff circles”. A face-off happens when a goal was scored or when a team has incurred a penalty. During this time, only two players will be inside this circle while the other players must stand outside. The two players from the opposing team will try to control the puck and pass to their team or go straight for a score.

An interesting thing to take note of is that there are slight differences regarding sizes on how large an Ice Rink is. Most European countries go with a much larger size , 61 metres by 30.0 metres. North American Ice Hockey rinks on the other hand use 61 metres by 26 metres.

This means that our rinks are slightly larger than our North American counterparts, but the essence of the game still remains; get as many points as skillfully and as quickly as possible!