 One of the most exciting events in hockey is when the referee blows his whistle and he points to the center face-off spot, which means that he is just called a penalty shot. The rule about penalty shots is simple, but it is also very specific which is why you won't see them happen all that often. But let's take a look at when the referee would make that call. The rulebook tells us that if a player who has the puck has nobody except the goalie between him and the net and he is interfered with, then a penalty shot should be called. So our green player here has the puck and you might hear an announcer say that he has a breakaway or he has a clear path to the net. And so if the orange defender comes up behind him and pulls him down, this would then be a penalty shot. However, if the defensive player is slightly in front of the puck possessor, then even if he does interfere with him, he might get called for a penalty but not for a penalty shot. And even if our puck handler is pulled down from behind, if there is another defender between him and the goalie at the time, then this would again probably be a penalty but not a penalty shot. So in the event the puck carrier does pull away from everyone else, the player behind him really can't do very much. He can't hook them, he can't trip them and he especially can't throw his stick. That's something if you play hockey that you never want to throw your stick. So the only thing that the defender can really do is skate as fast as he can and dive to try to poke the puck away or he can I guess sit back and hope that the goalie makes a really good save. Now if a penalty shot is awarded for those of you who don't know, the puck is placed at center ice and the player who had the breakaway in the first place gets another opportunity to do just that. He gets to go one on one with the goalie with no other players on the ice. A second part of the rule is that it notes that a penalty shot can also be called if something is thrown from the bench at a player on a breakaway and where a coach or someone else on the bench to throw something onto the ice, he would immediately be ejected and probably find a fairly large sum of money too. I've never actually seen this happen but just something interesting that is in there. And it's not technically a penalty shot but in the rare event that a penalty shot scenario you could call it would arise with an empty net. That is the puck carrier has a clear path to an empty net and the defensive player interferes with that puck carrier rather than have a penalty shot on an empty net which probably would be kind of funny to watch. But if this is the case then the rule simply states that a goal will automatically be awarded to the non-offending team.