Hockey is one of the most exciting sports. Hockey battles are always very spectacular. However, there are some interesting facts that many people are not even aware of.
1. Hockey is one of the most popular sports games in the world, along with football, basketball, and cricket.
2. In addition to the usual ice hockey, there is field hockey with a small ball, roller hockey, and even underwater in the pool from four to six meters deep.
3. Canadians love ice hockey, and even a Canadian 5 dollar bill depicts a hockey match. Not surprisingly, according to the 2016 International Ice Hockey Federation World Ranking – Canada is the strongest team in the world today.
4. When it came to hockey, of course, we couldn’t overlook the interesting facts about the hockey puck. The first puck was made of wood and it was square. The disk made of rubber appeared in the game in 1879.
5. Before 1914, the referee did not throw the puck on the ice but put it between the players’ sticks. This led to a lot of cuts, bruises, and even broken hands for the referees. And that is why the rule for drop the puck was introduced to the game.
6. The hokey punks made of vulcanized rubber, and it is 1 inch (2.5 cm) thick and 3 inches (7.6 cm) in diameter and weighs 5.5 to 6 ounces (156 to 170 grams).
7. The current slapshot speed record is held by Canadian hockey player Robert (Bobby) Hull, whose slapshot was clocked at 118.3 miles per hour (190.5 kilometers per hour).
8. According to estimates by Detroit’s most popular Detroit Free Press, over 68% of professional hockey players at least once have lost their teeth at training or playing.
9. The shortest goalie ever to play in the NHL was Canadian professional Hockey – Roy Worters. Although his height was only 5’3″ (160 cm), Roy played twelve seasons in the National Hockey League.
10. One of the tallest people to play in the NHL is Slovak professional ice hockey defenseman – Zdeno Chara, his height is 6′ 9″ (206 cm). He is also the second European-born and raised captain to win the Stanley Cup in 2011.
11. Hockey is a tough and energy-consuming game; in a match a hockey player can lose more than a kilo of weight, most of which is water.
12. The last goalie that played without a mask was Andy Brown on April 7, 1974, who was nicknamed “Fearless.”
13. The first game of organized ice hockey was held on March 3, 1875, in Montreal, Quebec at the Victoria Skating Rink, as they wrote in the local newspaper “Montreal Gazette.”
14. The National Hockey League (NHL) was founded in 1917.
15. Despite the fact that the Canadians were the founders of hockey, the Ice Hockey World Championships did not take place in Canada until 2008.
