How to watch hockey for people who don’t watch sports: a beginner’s guide (with gifs!)
If you’ve never watched ice hockey before, a game can seem like nothing more than a bunch of players in colorful jerseys moving back and forth across the ice. Most people can appreciate a smooth move or a great save, but what’s happening during all that play that doesn’t make the highlight reels? And how does it relate to the narrative of your team(s) and/or player(s)?
This is not a list of rules because, in my experience, lists of rules aren't that helpful for novices that don’t already follow a sport, and are widely available besides. Instead, this is a guide to some common scenarios that those rules create and how loudly you should yell at your television while they’re happening.
(This is also not a guide for finding a broadcast of a hockey game. Hockey broadcasts are available at, ahem, a wide variety of price points via cable, official streaming, or miscellaneous other internet sources which one can learn about elsewhere.)
Don’t worry about following the puck!
“The puck is so small! How do you see it?” Don’t worry about that. Watch where the players are going: they almost always know where the puck is, so by watching their positioning and body language, you’ll know where it is, too! (It might take you a little while to get the hang of this, but don't stress; you'll get there.) You can imagine how difficult it must have been to see the puck on an old television, and yet people have been watching hockey on TV since live sports broadcasts were invented. If the location of the puck is particularly important, the broadcast will do a slo-mo replay.
In the first gif, a player shoots the puck and the goaltender makes a save as the puck slides across the ice. In the second gif, the same event is shown in slow motion. [src]
The basics
There are five skaters and a goalie on the ice for each team. Over the course of three (not four!) 20-minute periods, they will use their hockey sticks to try to get the puck into the opposing team’s net to score a goal. The team with more goals wins. If the game is tied at the end of the third period, it goes to overtime, which has different rules. At the beginning of the game and whenever the whistle blows to stop play, play will (re)start with a "faceoff," where the referee will drop a puck down between two opposing players. If your team “draws” a penalty (has a penalty committed against them), they will be on the "power play."
Power play & penalty kill
A player that commits a penalty is sent to the “penalty box” (a.k.a. the sin bin) and has to stay there for the duration of the penalty. Their team has to play with one fewer players on the ice while their player is in the box; that penalized team is now on the “penalty kill.” The other team, which now has more skaters on the ice, is on the power play and has a “man advantage.”
A regular minor penalty lasts for two minutes or until the team on the power play scores a goal. (A major penalty is five minutes, and does not end if the team on the power play scores a goal.) A power play is one of the best opportunities to score!
Most often, one player is in the box at a time, and the game will be five skaters on one team vs. four skaters on the other team. Penalties can stack, so sometimes you will end up with five-on-three or four-on-four or four-on-three play. However, each team will always have at least three skaters.
The team in dark jerseys (the Colorado Avalanche) have five skaters on the ice, while the team in light jerseys (the New York Rangers) have four. Colorado is on the power play, and New York is on the penalty kill. Notice the extra blue clock in the corner counting down the time remaining in Colorado’s power play. [src]
Things that are good
You want your team to have control of the puck, of course, but what do you want to see past that? Watch for two good scenarios that are easy for novices to spot: a “chance off the rush” or “getting set up in the zone.”
A chance off the rush means that your team is skating down the ice towards the other team’s goal in possession of the puck, one or more skaters going across the blue line and towards the goal while the other team fails to stop them. Some teams score most of their goals like this! Hopefully, your team can get in a good shot on goal “off the rush” before they get tangled up with the opposing team. Feel free to yell “shoot!” at your television to encourage them.
Here a New York Islanders (white jerseys) player gets the puck, goes down the ice, and creates a chance off the rush as the Islanders approach the Minnesota Wild’s (dark jerseys) goal. One Islander passes the puck to his teammate, who shoots the puck into the upper left corner of the net to score a goal. [src]
“Getting set up in the zone” means that all five skaters on your team are “in the zone,” or across the blue line, and arranged in front of the other team’s goal. You want to see your team set up in a rough circle and in complete possession of the puck, passing it back and forth to each other and bouncing it off the boards (the wall around the ice) until a player sees a good opportunity and takes a shot. Again, you can yell “shoot the puck!” at your television here. It might even help!
Let’s go back to this gif. Notice how Colorado (dark uniforms) are set up around the outside of the zone, with one guy in the middle, and are passing the puck back and forth until one of them sees a good shot and takes it. The way the players are arranged will look different during regular five-on-five play vs. during a power play, but the basic principle (around the zone, one player by the net, controlling the puck) remains the same.
The zones
What are these zones I keep referencing? Notice the blue lines dividing the ice in three. The area behind the blue line with the net your team is defending is “your team’s zone” or “the defensive zone.” The other end of the ice with the net the other team is defending is “the other team’s zone” or “the offensive zone.” In between is “the neutral zone.”
If Team A is protecting the goal on the left, the left part of the ice is “Team A’s zone” or their “defensive zone.” The right part of the ice is “the offensive zone” or sometimes “the attacking zone.” For Team B, protecting the net on the right, this diagram would be reversed. [src]
When “entering the offensive zone”—going over the blue line—the puck or the person carrying the puck must be first over the blue line. If you don’t have the puck and you are the first across the blue line, you are “offsides.”
Notice in the bottom right of this gif how all the players in light jerseys (the New York Rangers) pause at the blue line to let the Rangers player with the puck (furthest right) cross the blue line first. [src]
There is one extremely important consequence of this rule: when the puck is knocked “out of the zone” back across the blue line, every player on the attacking team has to leave the zone (go back across the blue line) and re-enter.
In my experience, understanding this one simple consequence of the offsides rule unlocks a much deeper understanding of how hockey works.
(It proved difficult to find a gif of the puck being knocked out of the zone and players regrouping. I looked for a long time. I’ll keep looking and update this guide when I find one. It happens a lot, but people don't often include it when gif-ing.)
Things that are bad
You don’t want to see an opposing player streaking down the ice with nothing between them and the goal except the goalie. This is a “breakaway.” Not great for your team!
Here’s an old gif of Jaromír Jágr, playing for the New Jersey Devils (red jerseys), scoring a goal on a breakway. [src]
When your team is stuck in their own zone while the other team has full control of the puck and is passing it amongst themselves at their leisure, set up in your zone—this is bad. At the very least you want your team to interfere and move the puck out across the blue line, therefore forcing the other team to all exit your zone. (You can yell “get it out! Oh my God! Clear the puck out of the zone!” at your television at this point.)
If your team is trapped in their own zone for too long, they start to run into a major issue: they can’t “change.”
Changing
One of the biggest differences between hockey and other major sports in North America is the concept of changing. Skaters only spend a short amount of time (a “shift”) on the ice, then skate to the bench where their teammates are waiting and switch places, sitting on the bench while a teammate takes their place on the ice. NHL shifts are only about 45 seconds long!
On the upper left of this gif, notice the team in dark jerseys (the New York Rangers) all changing—players on the ice swapping places with players on the bench. The Rangers have knocked the puck out of the zone and take the opportunity to change, since they’re tired. But they didn’t have as much time as they thought, and the team in light jerseys (the Tampa Bay Lightning) takes advantage of that to score a goal. [src]
It’s a bad idea to change if the other team has possession of the puck, since during the time it takes you to skate to the bench and your replacement to skate out to the play, your team has one fewer skater available to be involved with the play and is at a disadvantage.
Look in the top left of this gif: the team in dark jerseys (the Arizona Coyotes) swaps out two players while the team in light jerseys (the Dallas Stars) is trapped in their own zone. Dallas can’t change, since a player taking the time to swap out would put them at a severe disadvantage, and as a result they will grow tired and slow while Arizona can put fresh skaters on the ice. [src]
Skaters are grouped together into “lines” (three forwards) and “pairs” (two defenders), and tend to swap out as a group. This way, they’re usually playing with the same other players. The goalie doesn’t change, although there are special circumstances where they may leave the ice so their team can add an extra skater.
Changing can happen during a stoppage in play after the whistle blows, or “on the fly,” meaning during play.
When the camera is focused on a player by themself near or behind their team’s goal, stickhandling the puck with nobody in sight besides maybe a single opposing player coming into their zone, both teams are likely taking the opportunity to change off-camera.
There are only two players visible in the beginning of this gif because all the other players are changing. The camera follows the puck instead of showing the changing players. (Spot the player jumping over the boards in the upper right.) [src]
Other things to watch and listen for
Something you can do that might help you get a feel for the rhythm of the game is to pick a single player (because you like their number, you think their name is cool, you think they’re hot, you recognize their name, literally whatever) and track them. When do they get on the ice? When do they get off? Are they put on for the power play or the penalty kill? This can be hard at first, since television doesn’t always show line changes, so don’t worry too much if you have trouble. But giving it a try might help you learn something!
Listen to the sound cues of the game as well. The crowd knows when a particularly good scoring chance develops, or when the puck gets knocked out of the zone, and they’ll get louder. The play-by-play announcers will raise their voices when something exciting happens, as well.
As time goes on, you’ll find it easier and easier to follow a game! You’ll know where the puck is without looking for it and you might even be able to recognize players by skating style alone.
If possible, try to get to a game in-person. Being able to see everything that’s happening on the ice instead of being restricted by what a broadcast camera shows really helps! There are lower-level professional hockey leagues in many places you wouldn’t expect to find them (everywhere from Alabama to Australia), as well as high school and college games. Tickets will be cheap and you’ll learn a lot.
Hopefully, you’ll now be able to watch a hockey game and see something more than people skating back and forth!
A quick review of all the terms I snuck in there:
Two opposing hockey teams compete to score goals by putting the puck in each other’s net. Each team has five skaters and one goalie on the ice, except when there has been one or more penalties; then, one team is on the power play and has a man advantage, while the penalized team is on the penalty kill. Teams change their players every minute or so, but try to keep players grouped by forward line or defensive pair. Changing can happen on the fly or during a stoppage in play, after which play is restarted with a faceoff. You want your team to bring the puck into the other team’s zone; when that happens, you can watch for scenarios like a chance off the rush or getting set up in the zone. After three twenty-minute-long periods of play, the team with more goals wins the game.
There’s a lot more I could talk about: types of penalties, checking, fighting and the concept of a code of honor, the cult of goalies, dumping the puck, controlled/uncontrolled zone entries/exits, breakouts, umbrella/overload/1-3-1 powerplays, forechecks and backchecks, cycling the puck, or even just icing… but this should be enough to get you started! And that list should give you something more to google.
And of course, if you have any questions, I’m always happy to talk about hockey! My askbox and DMs are open.
[src]
