 Hello there and welcome to how to play hockey 101. In the last video we looked at how a hockey rink is set up and what all the lines and dots mean on the rink. If you have no clue how to play hockey I would suggest starting with that video but it won't take you long to catch on if you're just starting with this one. In this video I want to get into how the game is set up and explain what will actually be happening most of the time while you're watching a game. If you just start watching a game on TV you'll probably figure things out eventually but it will be much quicker and easier if you get the basics down here first. Everything in this video will be for the NHL unless I say otherwise. So chapter one. How are teams set up? Each team in the NHL for each particular game will have 20 players 18 of them will be skaters and two will be goalies just starter and a backup goalie. They won't all play at one time because that would obviously make things very crowded and complicated so at any one time each team will have six players on the ice. Five skaters and one goalie. Three of the skaters will be what are called four words. These guys main job is to shoot the puck into the other goal and score points for their team. These three forwards are the left wing the center and the right wing. No those have nothing to do with politics. Thank goodness. The other two skaters will be defensemen who are helping the goalies stop the other team from shooting the puck into our net and then of course we have the goalie in the net. These players can jump on to and off of the bench and be replaced by another teammate at any time during the game. So to avoid confusion teams have what are called lines. There will be four groups or four lines of three forwards each. Each line will have a left wing a center and a right wing. These lines are numbered usually one through four with the first line featuring the best players and the fourth line featuring the guys who aren't quite as good. Each team will also have three pairs of defensemen. There's no rule that says that each player has to stay with the same group of guys on the same line the entire game so they can be moved from one line to the next and often are even within the same game but guys are usually kept together because the more you play together the better they get to know each other and hopefully the better they will play. So at some point say the second line will be on the ice and it will go and jump on to the bench and the first line will jump on to the ice. When this happens this is called a line change. At certain points in the game you might see a team do something called pulling their goalie which means that the goalie will skate to the bench and a sixth skater will take his place on the ice. This will leave their net without a goalie which we call an empty net. This usually only happens when a team is losing by goal laid in the game and they need to score to avoid losing so they pull their goalie and they go overbroke to have that extra skater on there to shoot the puck. Now one of the most important questions of any game how do you win a hockey game is divided into three 20 minute periods the first the second and the third period. Each period is 20 minutes long and there's about a 15 minute break in between each one. Whichever team has scored more goals after three periods wins the game. If the two teams are tied after the third period in the regular season they play a five minute overtime in which both teams will only have four skaters and whoever scores first in overtime wins the game. If they're still tied after overtime there's a shootout which just like in soccer the teams alternate when a one-on-one matchup between a player trying to score against the other teams goalie. In the playoffs overtime is 20 minute periods and teams keep playing five on five until one team scores and this can sometimes take an extra two or three periods. Because these games will sometimes go on for over an hour with literally every shot potentially ending the game hockey fans will tell you that overtime hockey in the playoffs is just about one of the most exciting things you will see in sports like if you've never been able to figure out why people like hockey so much why did they just watch these guys chase a rubber puck up and down the ice all day long then you need to watch overtime playoff hockey and if you are not excited by that then you may want to check to see if you still have a pulse. So how do we get a game started as we touch on in the last video a game of hockey will feature many face-offs and this happens every time there's a stoppage in play regardless of the reason a face-off is when a player for each team will stand facing each other and the referee will drop the puck in between them the two players will fight over it not literally fight that comes later but they will just they will try to pass it back to their teammates and play will continue from there. The first face-off of the game will take place at center ice after that face-offs are usually at the face-off spot closest to where play ended last. As I mentioned earlier players are allowed to change their lines even while the game is going on so theoretically an entire 20 minute period could be played without stopping that'll almost never happen though lots of things will stop the clock and then that face-off will follow. For example if the puck goes up and over the glass and into the crowd or over the boards and into either bench play is stopped and there's a face-off of the spot closest to where the puck was shot from. This also includes if the puck goes over the glass behind the goal and into the net up there. The most common way that the clock is stopped is called freezing the puck and this is when a goalie catches a shot in his glove and holds on to it. He can put the puck back into play but if there are players from the other team anywhere nearby the referee will usually whistle the play dead and the clock will stop and then they'll have a face-off at one of the spots right beside the net and that's when the clock will start again. Two of the other scenarios for stopping the clock are a little more complicated so in the interest of time I'm going to give you the basics but each one will also have their own videos to describe them in more detail so if you don't pick up on everything here you can go and watch those videos after this one. The first one is called going offside. When a team has the puck and they are entering the offensive zone the puck must cross the blue line before any of the players do. If a player goes into the zone and then the puck comes in after him this isn't offside. The referee will blow their whistle the clock will be stopped and a face-off will take place at one of the two dots right outside the blue line. The second one is called icing the puck. Unfortunately this is not the kind of icing that comes on a cake and icing is when a team has the puck behind the red line and they shoot it way down over their opponent's goal line and I don't mean that it goes into the net. If it goes into the net it would be a goal but remember that the goal line extends the whole way across the ring. So if the puck is shot down here and a player from the other team crosses this imaginary line which is formed by the two face-off circles before a player on the other team who shot the puck can cross that imaginary line then this is icing. Play is stopped there's a face-off back town here in the zone of the team who shot the puck and not only that but the team who shot the puck cannot change any of the players on the ice. The final chapter of our overview of hockey here is penalties. Being called for a penalty is basically the hockey equivalent of being sent to time out. Player who violates a certain rule must sit in the penalty box for a certain amount of time. Most penalties are called minor penalties which means that the player has to sit in the penalty box for two minutes. This would be something like tripping another player with your stick. Hooking a player by putting your stick around his waist and trying to hold him back. Cross-checking him by holding your stick with both of your hands so it's parallel to the ground and shoving a guy with it or high sticking which means that you hit another player in the head with your stick. You're not allowed to do that I think for obvious reasons. So upon being called for a penalty the player in question will have to sit in the penalty box and his team cannot replace him on the ice. So instead of having five players they will only have four. The team who is down a man in this case the green team is said to be short-handed and the orange team who is a man up is said to be on the power play. So if a team scores a goal while they're on the power play this is called a power play goal. A power play goal also means that the player in the penalty box can come out of the box no matter how much time was left on his punishment. On the flip side if a team with four players scores a goal it is called a short-handed goal. If a player's action is particularly nasty the referee can call him for a double minor which is two consecutive minor penalties or basically a four minute penalty. There are also a few actions that warrant the calling of a major penalty which means the player is sent to the penalty box for five minutes rather than just two. A major penalty also means that the player must serve his entire five minutes in the penalty box no matter how many goals the other team scores while he's in there. For a single player to receive a major penalty has become fairly uncommon in the NHL. Usually you will see a major penalty as the result of a fight and in this situation both players who were involved in the fight will receive a major penalty and they will both have to serve their penalties although because they happen at the same time play will continue as five on five anyway and those two players just can't come on into the ice until their five minutes are up. Two players on one team can be called for a penalty at the same time meaning one team will have what is called a two-man advantage. This means that the team on the power play will have five skaters while the short-handed team will only have three. Three is the minimum number of skaters that a team can have on the ice at any one time so you'll never see a five on two. It is possible for both teams to have players in the penalty box at the same time though so you may see a four on four situation or a four on three or very rarely a three on three which is kind of cool but also kind of funny when it happens too. Okay so that was a lot to go over but it should give you a pretty general idea of how hockey works and most of the things you see on TV should make some sense. As I mentioned I will have full descriptions of other topics like icings and offside soon so if you want more hockey either go find a game on TV or you can check out one of those videos. I'll see you then.