Encyclopedia
Ice hockey, referred to simply as
hockey in
Canada and the
United States, is a team sport played on
ice. The most prominent ice hockey nations are
Canada,
Czech Republic,
Finland,
Russia,
Slovakia,
Sweden and the
United States. While there are 64 total members of the
International Ice Hockey Federation, those seven nations have dominated ice hockey. Of the sixty medals awarded in men's competition at the Olympic level from 1920 on, only six did not go to one of those countries and only one such medal was awarded above bronze.
Ice hockey is most popular as a sport in areas that are sufficiently cold for natural, reliable seasonal ice cover. It is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented by the
National Hockey League at the highest level. It is the official
national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity, and also the most popular sport in
Finland. Six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadians currently outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost three to one, and about thirty percent of the league's players are non-North Americans. The sport's popularity in the U.S. is concentrated in certain regions, notably the
Northeast, the
Upper Midwest, and
Alaska. This geographic concentration helps to make ice hockey the least watched major sport in the
United States, however it is by far the most watched in
Canada. Nonetheless, in certain major U.S. cities it is still a major competitor to
basketball for winter sports fans.
History
Games between teams hitting an object with curved sticks have been played throughout the world since prehistoric times. The word "hockey" has been used for such games since the 16th century, but its etymology is uncertain. It may derive from the
Old French word
hoquet,
shepherd's crook, but it may also derive from the
Middle Dutch word
hokkie which is the diminutive of
hok, meaning literally
shack or
doghouse, but which in popular use meant
goal. Many of these games were developed for fields, though where conditions allowed, they were also played on icy conditions , as shown in 16th-century
Dutch paintings where a number of townsfolk play a hockey-like game on a frozen
canal.
European immigrants brought various versions of hockey-like games to North America, such as the
Scottish sport of
shinty and the closely-related
Irish sport of
hurling, as well as the game of hockey itself played in England. Where necessary these seem to have been adapted for icy conditions; for example, a colonial Williamsburg newspaper records hockey being played in a
snow storm in Virginia. Both
English- and
French-speaking Canadians played hockey on frozen rivers, lakes, and ponds using cheese cutters strapped to their boots, and early paintings show hockey being played in
Nova Scotia. Author
Thomas Chandler Haliburton wrote of boys from King's College School in Windsor playing
"hurley on the ice" when he was a student there around 1800..
Sir John Franklin wrote in a letter in 1825 that
"The game of hockey played on the ice was the morning sport.” while on the
Great Bear Lake during one of his
Arctic expeditions. . In 1843 a British Army officer in Kingston wrote
"Began to skate this year, improved quickly and had great fun at hockey on the ice" ,and the Society for International Hockey Research contends that an early game of hockey on ice occurred in Halifax in 1859, based on a Boston Evening Gazette article published then. Proponents of this theory state that the surname Hockey exists in the district surrounding Windsor, though this is an unlikely coincidence. In 1943, the Canadian Amateur Hockey Association declared Kingston the birthplace of hockey, based on a recorded 1886 game played between students of
Queen's University and the
Royal Military College of Canada. These early games may have absorbed the physically aggressive aspects of what the
Mi'kmaq Aboriginal
First Nation in
Nova Scotia called
dehuntshigwa'es .
Foundation of the modern game
The development of the modern game centred on
Montreal. On March 3, 1875 the first organized indoor game was played there, as recorded in the
Montreal Gazette. In 1877,
McGill University students, James Creighton, Henry Joseph, Richard F. Smith, W.F. Robertson, and W.L. Murray codified seven ice hockey rules, and the first ice hockey club, McGill University Hockey Club, was founded in 1880. The game became so popular that it was featured for the first time in Montreal's annual Winter Carnival in 1883. In 1885, A.P. Low introduced the game to
Ottawa. During the same year, the
Oxford University Ice Hockey Club was formed to play the first Varsity Match against traditional rivals
Cambridge in St. Moritz, Switzerland; this was won by the Dark Blues 6-0, unfortunately however the first photographs and team lists date from 1895. This continues to be the oldest hockey rivalry in history. In 1888, the new
Governor General of Canada,
Lord Stanley of Preston , attended the Carnival and was so impressed with the hockey spectacle that he thought there should be a championship trophy for the best team. The
Stanley Cup was first awarded in 1893 to the champion amateur team in Canada, Montreal AAA, and continues to be awarded today to the
National Hockey League's championship team. By this time there were almost a hundred teams in Montreal alone, and leagues throughout Canada. Also by 1893,
Winnipeg hockey players incorporated
cricket pads to better protect the
goaltender's legs. They also introduced the "scoop" shot, later known as the wrist shot.
1893 was also the date of the first ice hockey matches in the U.S. at
Yale University and
Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. Amateur Hockey League was founded in
New York City in 1896, and the first professional team, the Portage Lakers was formed in 1903 in
Houghton, Michigan .
The five sons of Lord Stanley were instrumental in bringing ice hockey to Europe, beating a court team at
Buckingham Palace in 1895. By 1903 a five-team league had been founded . The Internationale de Hockey sur Glace was founded in 1908 and the first European championships were won by Great Britain in 1910.
The Professional Era
In North America, two openly professional leagues emerged: the National Hockey Association in 1910 and the Pacific Coast League shortly after. In 1914 these two leagues competed for the Stanley Cup before
World War I forced a suspension in league activities. The
National Hockey League was formed in November of 1917, when members of the former National Hockey Association were engaged in a dispute with one of their fellow owners over insurance proceeds. The NHA disbanded, and the new league began play in December of that year with four Canadian teams. The Pacific Coast League folded and in 1926 the NHL, now with ten teams, took control of the Stanley Cup and formed a Canadian and an American division.
With the growth of professionalism in Canada, a new challenge cup, the
Allan Cup, was instituted for amateur players to replace the Stanley Cup. This led to the foundation of an amateur governing body, the Canadian Hockey Association, which entered the winning Canadian team for the first
Olympic title in Antwerp in 1920.
Between the wars, British ice hockey grew rapidly with new ice rinks and an influx of Canadian players. A European competition was instituted, and in the 1936 Winter Olympics at
Garmisch,
Germany, Great Britain won the gold medal, imposing the first ever Olympic defeat on the Canadians. However, because of the disruption of
World War II and a lack of suitable venues afterwards the sport faded rapidly. This contrasted with rapid growth elsewhere. The NHL doubled to 12 teams in 1967, and now has 30 teams and has reorganised itself several times.
On 16 February, 2005, the
NHL became the first major professional team sport in North America to cancel an entire season because of a labor dispute. Play resumed again in the fall of 2005. During the dispute, a Canadian senior's league asked to play for the cup, but weren't allowed, in violation of the terms of the Stanley Cup's handover to the NHL. Subsequent to the 2004-05 strike the NHL and the Stanley Cup wardens reached an agreement whereby if a future NHL season is cancelled, other teams may be allowed to challenge for the Stanley Cup.
The official museum for the NHL is the
Hockey Hall of Fame in
Toronto, Canada.
Equipment
The hard surfaces of the ice and boards,
pucks flying at high speed , and other players maneuvering pose a multitude of inherent safety hazards. Besides
ice skates and sticks, hockey players are usually equipped with an array of safety gear to lessen their risk of serious injury. This usually includes a helmet, shoulder pads, elbow pads, mouth guard, protective gloves, heavily padded shorts, sometimes known as Breezers, a 'jock' athletic protector, shin guards and sometimes a neck guard. Goaltenders wear masks and much bulkier, specialized equipment designed to protect them from many direct hits from the puck.
The hockey skate is usually made of a thick layer of leather or nylon to protect the feet and lower legs of the player from injury. Its blade is rounded on both ends to allow for easy maneuvering. Goaltenders' skates, however, have blades that are lower to the ice and more square than round; this is advantageous to the goalies, for whom lateral mobility and stability are more important than quick turns and speed.
Youth and college hockey players are required to wear a mask made from metal wire or transparent plastic attached to their helmet that protects their face during play. Professional and adult players may instead wear a visor that protects only their eyes, or no mask at all; however, some provincial and state legislation require full facial protection at all non-professional levels. Rules regarding visors and face masks are mildly controversial at professional levels. Some players feel that they interfere with their vision or breathing, or encourage carrying of the stick up high in a reckless manner, while others believe that they are a necessary safety precaution.
In fact, the adoption of safety equipment has been a gradual one at the North American professional level, where even helmets were not mandatory until the 1980s. The famous goalie,
Jacques Plante, had to suffer a hard blow to the face with a flying puck in 1959 before he could persuade his coach to allow him to wear a protective
goalie mask in play.
Game
Ice hockey is played on a
hockey rink. During normal play, there are six players per side on the ice at any time, each of whom is on
ice skates. There are five players and one
goaltender per side. The objective of the game is to score
goals by shooting a hard
vulcanized rubber disc, the
puck, into the opponent's goal net, which is placed at the opposite end of the rink. The players may control the puck using a long stick with a blade that is commonly curved at one end. Players may also redirect the puck with any part of their bodies, subject to certain restrictions. A player can angle their feet so the puck can redirect into the net, but there can be no kicking motion. Players may not intentionally bat the puck into the net with their hands.
Hockey is an "offside" game, meaning that forward passes are allowed, unlike in rugby. Before the 1930's hockey was an onside game, meaning that only backward passes were allowed. The period of the onside game was the golden age of stick-handling, which was of prime importance in moving the game forward. With the arrival of offside rules, the forward pass transformed hockey into a truly team sport, where individual heroics diminished in importance relative to team play, which could now be coordinated over the entire surface of the ice as opposed to merely rearward players. This historical development is described masterfully in Ken Dryden's book "The Game."
The other five players are typically divided into three forwards and two defencemen. The
forward positions consist of a
centre and two
wingers: a
left wing and a
right wing. Forwards often play together as units or
lines, with the same three forwards always playing together. The
defencemen usually stay together as a pair, but may change less frequently than the forwards. A substitution of an entire unit at once is called a
line change. Teams typically employ alternate sets of forward lines and defensive pairings when
shorthanded or on a
power play. Substitutions are permitted at any time during the course of the game, although during a stoppage of play the home team is permitted the final change. When players are substituted during play, it is called changing
on the fly. A new NHL rule added in the 2005-2006 season prevents a team from changing their line after they
ice the puck.
The boards surrounding the ice help keep the puck in play, and play often proceeds for minutes without interruption. When play is stopped, it is restarted with a
faceoff. There are two major rules of play in ice hockey that limit the movement of the puck:
offside and
icing.
In most competitive leagues, each team may carry at most 23 players on its game roster, two of whom are typically goaltenders. North American professional leagues restrict the total number of skaters who may dress for a game to 18 or fewer.
The remaining characteristics of the game often depend on the particular code of play being used. The two most important codes are those of the
International Ice Hockey Federation and of the North American
National Hockey League . North American amateur hockey codes, such as those of
Hockey Canada and
USA Hockey, tend to be a hybrid of the NHL and IIHF codes, while professional rules generally follow those of the NHL.
Penalties
- See main article: Penalty
A typical game of ice hockey has two to four
officials on the ice charged with enforcing the rules of the game. There are typically two
linesmen, who are responsible only for calling offside and icing violations, and one or two
referees, who call goals and all other penalties.
In men's hockey, but not in women's, a player may use his hip or shoulder to hit another player if the player has the puck or is the last to have touched it. This use of the hip and shoulder is called
body checking. Not all physical contact is legal -- in particular, most forceful stick-on-body contact, and hits from behind, are illegal. There are many infractions for which a player may be assessed a
penalty. The governing body for United States amateur hockey has implemented many new rules to reduce the number stick-on-body occurrences, as well as other detrimental and illegal facets of the game .
For most penalties, the offending player is sent to the
penalty box and his team has to play without him and with one less man for a short amount of time, giving the other team what is popularly termed a
power play. A two-minute
minor penalty is often called for lesser infractions such as tripping, elbowing, roughing, high-sticking, too many players on the ice, illegal equipment, charging , holding, interference, delay of game, hooking, or cross-checking. More egregious fouls of this type may be penalized by a four-minute
double-minor penalty, particularly those which cause injury to the victimized player. These penalties end either when the time runs out or the other team scores on the power play; in the case of a goal scored during the first two minutes of a double minor, the penalty clock is set down to two minutes upon a score . Five-minute
major penalties are called for especially violent instances of most minor infractions which result in intentional injury to an opponent, as well as for fighting, checking from behind and spearing. Major penalties are always served in full; they do not terminate on a goal scored by the other team. The foul of 'boarding', defined as "check
[ing] an opponent in such a manner that causes the opponent to be thrown violently in the boards" by the is penalised either by a minor or major penalty at the discretion of the referee, based on the violence of the hit.
Two varieties of penalty do not always require the offending team to play a man down. Ten-minute
misconduct penalties are served in full by the penalized player, but his team may immediately substitute another player on the ice
unless a minor or major penalty is assessed in conjunction with the misconduct . In that case, the team designates another player to serve the minor or major; both players go to the penalty box, but only the designee may not be replaced, and he is released upon the expiration of the two or five minutes, at which point the ten-minute misconduct begins. In addition,
game misconducts are assessed for deliberate intent to inflict severe injury on an opponent , or for a major penalty for a stick infraction or repeated major penalties. The offending player is ejected from the game and must immediately leave the playing surface ; meanwhile, if a minor or major is assessed in addition, a designated player must serve out that segment of the penalty in the box .
A player who is tripped by an opponent on a
breakaway – when there are no defenders except the goaltender between him and the opponent's goal – is awarded a
penalty shot, an attempt to score without opposition from any defenders except the goaltender. A penalty shot is also awarded for a defender other than the goaltender covering the puck in the goal crease, a goaltender intentionally displacing his own goal posts during a breakaway in order to avoid a goal, a defender intentionally displacing his own goal posts when there is less than two minutes to play in regulation time or at any point during overtime, or a player or coach intentionally throwing a stick or other object at the puck or the puck carrier and the throwing action disrupts a shot or pass play.
Officials also stop play for puck movement violations, such as using one's hands to pass the puck in the offensive end, but no players are penalized for these offenses. The sole exceptions are deliberately falling on or gathering the puck to the body, carrying the puck in the hand, and shooting the puck out of play in one's defensive zone . In the NHL, there is an area behind the goal line that goaltenders are not allowed to play the puck; doing so also results in a delay of game minor.
Games are overseen by officials that are selected by the league for which they work. The most common officiating organization is
USA Hockey, where referees are selected for games depending on their experience level . Officials are divided into on-ice officials and off-ice officials.
Tactics
An important defensive tactic is
checking – attempting to take the puck from an opponent or to remove the opponent from play.
Forechecking is checking in the other team's zone;
backchecking is checking while the other team is advancing down the ice toward one's own goal. These terms usually are applied to checking by forwards.
Stick checking,
sweep checking, and
poke checking are legal uses of the stick to obtain possession of the puck.
Body checking is using one's shoulder or hip to strike an opponent who has the puck or who is the last to have touched it.
Offensive tactics include improving a team's position on the ice by advancing the puck out of one's zone towards the opponent's zone, progressively by gaining lines, first your own blue line, then the red line and finally the opponent's blue line. Offensive tactics are designed ultimately to score a goal by taking a shot. When a player purposely directs the puck towards the opponent's goal, he or she is said to shoot the puck.
A
deflection is a shot which redirects a shot or a pass towards the goal from another player, by allowing the puck to strike the stick and carom towards the goal. A
one-timer is a shot which is struck directly off a pass, without receiving the pass and shooting in two separate actions. A
deke is a feint with the body and/or stick to fool a defender or the goalie.
Headmanning the puck is the tactic of rapidly passing to the player farthest down the ice.
A team that is losing by one or two goals in the last few minutes of play may elect to
pull the goalie; that is, removing the goaltender and replacing him or her with an
extra attacker on the ice in the hope of gaining enough advantage to score a goal. However, this tactic is extremely risky, and often leads to the opposing team extending their lead by scoring a goal in the empty net.
Although it is officially prohibited in the rules, at the professional level
fights are sometimes used to affect morale of the teams, with aggressors hoping to demoralize the opposing players while exciting their own, as well as settling personal scores. Both players in an altercation receive five-minute major penalties for fighting. The player deemed to be the "instigator" of an NHL fight is penalized an additional two minutes for instigating, plus a ten-minute misconduct penalty. This so-called instigator rule is highly controversial in NHL hockey: many coaches, sportswriters, players and fans feel it prevents players from effectively policing the objectionable behavior of their peers, which is often cleverly hidden from referees. They point to less extreme on-ice violence during the era before the rule was introduced.
Toronto Maple Leafs owner Conn Smythe famously observed that "If you can't beat 'em in the alley you can't beat 'em on the ice."
Periods and overtime
A game consists of three
periods of twenty minutes each, the clock running only when the puck is in play. In international play, the teams change ends for the second period, again for the third period, and again after ten minutes of the third period. In many North American leagues, including the NHL, the last change is omitted. Recreational leagues and children's leagues often play shorter games, generally with three shorter periods of play.
Various procedures are used if a game is tied. In tournament play, as well as in the NHL playoffs, North Americans favour
sudden death overtime, in which the teams continue to play 20 minute periods until a goal is scored. Up until the 1999-00 season regular season NHL games were settled with a single 5 minute sudden death period with 5 players per side, with the winner awarded 2 points in the standings and the loser 0 points. In the event of a tie, each team was awarded 1 point. From 1999-00 until 2005-06 the
National Hockey League decided ties by playing a single five-minute sudden death overtime period with each team having 4 players per side to "open-up" the game. In the event of a tie, each team would still receive 1 point in the standings but in the event of a victory the winning team would be awarded 2 points in the standings and the losing team 1 point. The only exception to this rule is if a team opts to pull their goalie in exchange for an extra skater during overtime and is subsequently scored upon , - then the losing team receives no points for the overtime loss. International play and several North American professional leagues, including the NHL , now use an overtime period followed by a penalty shootout. If the score remains tied after an extra overtime period, the subsequent shootout consists of three players from each team taking penalty shots. After these six total shots, the team with the most goals is awarded the victory. If the score is still tied, the shootout then proceeds to a
sudden death format. Regardless of the number of goals scored during the shootout by either team, the final goal recorded will give the winning team one more goal than the score at the end of regulation time. In the NHL if a game is decided by a shootout the winning team is awarded 2 points in the standings and the losing team is awarded 1. Ties no longer occur in the NHL. Also, no statistics in the shootout count-no goals are awarded to players who score in the shootout, and goalkeepers are not credited with saves or goals against. Therefore, it is possible for a goalie to lose a game in which he gets a shutout.
Women's ice hockey
Ice hockey is one of the fastest growing women's sports in the world, with the number of participants increasing 400 percent in the last 10 years. While there are not as many organized leagues for women as there are for men, there exist leagues of all levels, including the
National Women's Hockey League, Western Women's Hockey League, and various European leagues; as well as university teams, national and
Olympic teams, and
recreational teams. There have been nine
IIHF World Women Championships.
The chief difference between women's and men's ice hockey is that bodychecking is not allowed in women's ice hockey. After the 1990 Women's World Championship, bodychecking was eliminated because female players in many countries do not have the size and mass seen in North American players. There are many who feel that the relative lack of physical play is a detriment to its popularity among the mainstream hockey public.
One woman,
Manon Rhéaume, appeared as a goaltender for the
Tampa Bay Lightning in preseason games against the St. Louis Blues and the
Boston Bruins, and in 2003 Hayley Wickenheiser signed with the
Kirkkonummi Salamat in the
Finnish men's Suomi-sarja league. Several women have competed in North American minor leagues, including goaltenders Charline Labonté, Kelly Dyer, Erin Whitten, Manon Rhéaume, and forward Angela Ruggeiro.
Sledge hockey
Sledge hockey is a form of ice hockey designed for players with physical
disabilities in their lower bodies. The players ride double-bladed
sledges using sticks which have a spike on one end for propulsion and a blade on the other end for directing the puck. The rules are very similar to
IIHF ice hockey rules.
Sport description
Sledge hockey is an innovative team sport that incorporates the same rules and discipline structure as regular ice hockey. In sledge hockey, players use their sticks not only to pass, stickhandle and shoot the puck but also to maneuver their sledges.
Canada is the most recognized international leader in the development of the sport of sledge hockey and equipment for players. Much of the equipment for the sport was first developed in Canada, such as sledge hockey sticks laminated with
fiberglass, as well as aluminum shafts with hand carved insert blades and special aluminum sledges with regulation skate blades.
History of sledge hockey
Sledge hockey was invented by three
Swedish wheelchair athletes on a frozen lake at a rehabilitation centre in
Stockholm in 1961. The game was not an instant success, and after only a couple of years of development, five teams competed for the Stockholm City Championship. The Swedish players subsequently introduced the sport to their
Norwegian neighbors and regular matches between respective national teams ensued. Norway in turn introduced the sport to
British wheelchair athletes. In the early 1980s one of the inventors, Rolf Johansson, a gold medal Paralympian in track wheelchair, gave one of his hockey sledges to Dick Loiselle, the former director of the 1976 Winter Olympics in
Montreal. Mr. Johansson did so under the condition that Mr. Loiselle introduce sledge hockey in Canada.
As a result of rapid growth of the sport, Sledge Hockey of Canada was created in 1993 and given the mandate by the Government of Canada to be the national sport federation responsible to coordinate, develop and promote the sport of sledge hockey in Canada.
In 1994, sledge hockey was introduced as a demonstration sport at the Paralympic Winter Games in
Lillehammer,
Norway. The sport became a full medal event at the
1998 Winter Paralympics in
Nagano,
Japan.
International competition
The annual men's Ice Hockey World Championships are highly regarded by Europeans, but they are less important to North Americans because they coincide with the
Stanley Cup playoffs. Consequently, Canada and the United States, and other countries with NHL players have never been able to field their best possible teams because many of their players are playing for the Stanley Cup. Furthermore, for many years professionals were barred from play, so Canada and the United States were further hampered. Now that many Europeans play in the NHL, the world championships no longer represent the best of any nation's players.
Hockey has been played at the Winter Olympics since 1924 . Canada won six of the first seven gold medals. The United States won their first gold medal in 1960. The
USSR won all but two Olympic ice hockey gold medals from 1956 to 1988 and won a final time as the
Unified Team at the 1992 Albertville Olympics. Since all players in the communist system were "amateurs," the USSR's elite national team was the best the country had to offer, while the best Americans, Swedes, Finns, and Canadians were professionals and thus barred from Olympic competition. Nonetheless, U.S. amateur college players defeated the heavily favored Soviet squad on the way to winning the
gold medal at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics. This "
Miracle on Ice" launched a surge of newfound popularity for a game about which many Americans had not cared much.
The
1972 Summit Series established
Canada and the
USSR as a major international ice hockey rivalry. It was followed by five Canada Cup tournaments, where the best players from every hockey nation could play. This tournament later became the
World Cup of Hockey, played in 1996 and 2004. Canada won in 2004 and the U.S. in 1996. Since 1998, NHL professionals have played in the Olympics as well, so that the best in the world have had more opportunities to face off.
There have been nine women's world championships, beginning in 1990. Women's hockey has been played at the Olympics since 1998. Currently Canada and the US dominate the world scene. The
2006 Winter Olympic final between Canada and Sweden marked the first world championship or Olympic final that did not involve both Canada and the US.
Ice hockey in popular culture
Like all of the major sports, hockey plays a major part in American popular culture. Though it is the least popular of the four professional sports in the US , a number of notable
Hollywood films have been made about hockey. Notable hockey films include
Slap Shot ,
The Mighty Ducks , and
Miracle . The first two are fictional comedies; the last is a drama based on the true story of the 1980 "Miracle on Ice" USA Olympic gold medal team. Other hockey films include
Youngblood, Hockey Night and
Mystery, Alaska is a 1999 [i] movie [i] directed [i] by Jay Roach [i]. ...
. Many other films are less hockey-oriented but nonetheless prominently involve the sport. Both
Happy Gilmore is a 1996 [i] sports [i] comedy film [i] starring Adam Sandler [i], Carl Weathers [i], ...
and
The Cutting Edge center around failed hockey players using their talents for other sports .
Hockey also frequently shows up in American television, particularly in shows set in the colder regions of the US such as the Northeast where the sport is on an almost equal footing to
basketball. One of the recurring characters on
Cheers was a long-running American [i] situation comedy [i] produced ...
was
Eddie LeBec , a French-Canadian
Boston Bruins goalie who married cast regular
Carla Tortelli. LeBec later was cut from the NHL and joined a travelling ice show; the character was eventually killed off. One memorable episode of
Seinfeld is an American [i] television [i] situation comedy [i] set in New York City [i] ...
, "
The Face Painter", involves the antics of Elaine's face-painting boyfriend Puddy, a rabid
New Jersey Devils fan, and Jerry's stubborn refusal to thank an acquaintance for New York Rangers playoff tickets after the game when he had already thanked him numerous times beforehand. In
NYPD Blue was a long-running American [i] television [i] police drama set in New York City [i] ...
, the character of PA Donna Abandando, played by
Gail O'Grady and a love interest of Detective Greg Medavoy in season 3, was a noted New York Rangers fan, having previously dated one of the players. Her Rangers pennant famously hung over her desk at the front of the squad room. Actor
Richard Dean Anderson has incorporated his personal love of hockey into two of his lead characters:
MacGyver, and
Stargate SG-1 is an American [i] television series [i] based upon the 1994 [i] science fiction [i] ...
s
Jack O'Neill. In an episode of
The Simpsons, "
Lisa on Ice", Bart is the star of his peewee hockey team, The Mighty Pigs, coached by
Chief Wiggum 
