Ice Hockey in 2010: Face-offs · 552

Ice hockey is unique in its geometry and its culture. Play never truly stops: there are no downs, few set pieces, and substitutions happen mid-play while the puck is live. The rink's boards keep the puck in motion, turning the surface into a three-dimensional pool table where angles and rebounds matter as much as skating. It is also deeply international, born in Canada, perfected in the Soviet and Scandinavian systems, and now populated by stars from more than a dozen nations. The handshake line after a hard playoff series, where bloodied rivals file past to shake hands, remains one of sport's most enduring rituals of respect.

The objective of ice hockey is to score more goals than the opposition by shooting the puck across the opponent's goal line and into a net guarded by a goaltender. Each team dresses six players, three forwards (left wing, centre, right wing), two defencemen and a goaltender, though teams rotate roughly four forward lines and three defensive pairings throughout a game. A goal counts one point on the scoreboard, and unlike many sports, scoring is relatively scarce: a typical NHL game finishes around six goals combined, which magnifies the value of every shift and every mistake.

A contest is divided into three periods of twenty minutes of running clock, stopped for every whistle. Referees drop the puck at a face-off to start play, and the game flows continuously until an infraction, a goal, or the puck leaving the ice halts it. Special situations, penalties that send a player to the box, delayed calls, and empty-net gambles, shape strategy far more than the raw run of play. If the score is level after regulation, overtime and, in many competitions, a shootout decide the winner.