 Hello and welcome. This is going to be the first in a series of videos explaining how to play ice hockey We're going to start with the most basic of the basics. So if you have no idea how to play hockey at all you are in the right place The best way to learn a new sport or any game really is probably first to understand the court That it's played on and some of the basic no-manclature. So the first thing let's look at how a hockey rink set up Ice hockey is unique because obviously it is played on an surface of ice There are many variations that you'll see like roller hockey on rollerblades or deck hockey where the players are running But we'll be looking at ice hockey in these videos. Although many of the rules will apply Regardless of the way you're playing The first thing you'll notice about the rink is that it's a mirror image. Both sides are exactly the same There are a lot of lines and dots and circles going on. Let's break them down First is this red line in the middle, which is shockingly called the red line I'll admit it's not the most creative name in the world, but you can appreciate its Simplicity the red line doesn't come into play a ton. So for now all you really have to know is that it's called the red line And it's in the middle To get slightly more complex. We have the blue lines There are two of them if you're colorblind. I apologize for how boring this must be so far But we'll come back to the blue lines in a second If you've watched even 30 seconds of hockey, you probably understand that the point is to shoot the puck into the goal The goals or the nets are at either end of the rink. A hockey net is four feet high By six feet wide and if you live in the 99% of the world that isn't the United States It's about 1.2 meters high by 1.8 meters wide. Our final lines that run across the surface of the ice are the goal lines This is the line that the puck must cross over in order to be considered to be in the goal But it also extends its entire way across the rink for a few other reasons that we'll look at in the future videos In front of each goal is a half circle area that is painted blue. This is called the goal crease Goalies do not have to stay in the crease, but they will be there most of the time So the crease kind of just exists to designate the goalies area Directly behind the net are two red lines that along with the goal line form a trapezoid Shape my lines are drawn a little crooked here, but you get the idea This area was only added a few years ago in an attempt to keep goalies closer to the net When they're behind the net the goalie can only play the puck Which means that he can only shoot it or pass it when he is between those lines inside the trapezoid The final element of the rink is the face-off spots and sport like soccer or basketball When the ball goes out of bounds play will begin again with somebody passing the ball back in bounds The way that play is restarted in hockey is called a face-off You'll see this happen quite a few times every game a player from each team will stand on either side of the face-off dot and Their teammates will stand behind them and then the referee will drop the puck between them Each player will try to pass the puck back to one of their teammates and then play will continue on from there The significance that these nine red circles on the ice have when it comes to face-offs is that every face-off will take place at one of them The game will start at the dot in the center on the red line But after that a face-off could happen at any one of them and that's really our rink red line blue lines Goal lines goals the creases trapezoids and the face-off spots These four circles that you see in the L lines inside of them are only there to tell players where to stand during face-offs In each zone so they don't have much to do with what happens during the play Speaking of these zones I did say we would come back to the blue line and we'll get to everything in more depth in future videos But as I mentioned the goal of hockey is to shoot the puck into your opponent's net The blue lines divide the surface into three areas First we have to establish that our team is trying to score at say the goal on the left side Regardless of the direction we are shooting the area between the blue lines is called the neutral zone This beige area here because we are going toward the left We are said to be attacking that zone So everything to the left of the left blue line is called the attacking zone You might also hear it called the offensive zone Our third zone is on the right which contains the goal that we are defending And so we call this area the green down here the defensive zone Ideally a team would spend most of their time with the puck in the attacking zone because one The more our team has the puck the better and two the further the puck is from our net the better our net being The one which we are defending To get an idea of the scale. How big is this in the National Hockey League? The NHL which is the highest level of play in the world the rank is 200 feet long and 85 feet wide There are a few differences in Places other than the United States. Usually the rank is a little bit bigger. I won't get into the exact Sizes but you can find them pretty easily on Wikipedia or another website The next element of the rank is the benches, which is where the players sit during the game During play each team will have five players plus their goalie on the ice But these players can change at any time even while the puck is in play So one player will skate over and hop onto the bench But another guy will jump off of the bench and onto the ice This will happen very quickly and it might seem confusing at first when five guys are jumping on and five are jumping off at the same time Opposite the benches are smaller benches called the penalty box Players who commit a foul during the game will have to sit in the penalty box for a certain amount of time Usually two or five minutes depending on how bad the penalty was The penalty box is kind of like being put into timeout only everyone's six feet tall 200 pounds and has a beard While a player is in the penalty box the team cannot replace him on the ice So instead of having five players skate around there the team will only have four until that penalty is over But to get back to the rink here's a photo of one in Canada taken from behind one of the nets You could see the ice and a few of the lines one thing we haven't noted yet is the boards and the glass around The rink the fans at a hockey game are very close to the rink because they're separated from the players by a piece of plexiglass Which if you don't know what plexiglass is I think plexiglass is more the brand name But it's basically like a two-inch thick piece of hard clear plastic. So so it's not really glass. It's much harder to break So here are our fans and they sit behind the boards Which are about three and a half feet high and there's usually a yellow stripe along the bottom of the boards Just so you could see where the ice stops and the board start and above the boards are the glass Which usually go up to about eight feet tall And as we saw in that photo above the glass and behind the goal There's a netting wrapped the whole way almost up to the roof of the arena Just to keep the puck from flying into the crowd and hitting anyone So if you did not understand what all the lines and areas in a hockey rink were before watching this video I hope you get it now If not leave a comment and I'll get back to you and if you do get it Then we can now move on to actually learning how to play the game So I'll see you next time and thanks for watching