Ice hockey rules

Ice hockey is fast and physical, and the referee calls things that are hard to follow from the stands. This page covers the rules you will run into most: the zones on the ice, offside, icing, the penalties and the power play. New to the game? Read the zones first — everything else builds on them.

The Rules of Ice Hockey - EXPLAINED!
Video by Ninh Ly · Watch on YouTube

The rink and the three zones

Two blue lines divide the rink into three zones. Which zone is which depends on the team you are following: your defending zone is the opponent's attacking zone. Almost every rule below — offside, icing, where the face-off goes — is ultimately a rule about lines. So start here.

IIHF dimensions: 60 × 30 m, blue lines 15 m apart, goal lines 4 m off the boards. Which end is defending and which is attacking depends on the team you are following — and swaps every period.

The three zones

Defending zone: The zone your own net stands in. This is where you defend, and where the attack is built from the back.
Neutral zone: The middle third between the two blue lines, with the red centre line running through it. This is where play is intercepted, turned around and where lines change.
Attacking zone: The zone the opponent's net stands in. Once the puck is in there, you can keep attacking until it leaves the zone again.

The lines

The two blue lines: They mark the edges of the zones and they decide offside: the puck must cross the blue line into the attacking zone first.
The red centre line: The line across the middle of the rink. It splits the ice into two halves and sets the point from which icing applies.
The goal lines: The lines running the full width of the rink through both nets. A goal counts only once the whole puck has crossed the goal line; the same line decides whether a puck is icing.

A line belongs to the zone it borders and it is thirty centimetres wide. A puck or a skate still touching the line has not left the zone yet.

Offside

Offside means an attacker entered the attacking zone before the puck did. The puck has to cross the blue line first — that is the whole rule. It keeps attackers from parking in front of the goalie waiting for a long pass.

Your skates count, your stick does not

What matters is where your skates are, not your stick and not your body. As long as one skate is still touching the blue line or behind it at the moment the puck crosses, you are onside. Your stick may reach well into the zone. If both skates are fully across the line before the puck gets there, it is offside.

Delayed offside

If the puck enters the zone with an attacker already in it, and nobody on the attacking team has touched the puck, the linesman raises his arm: delayed offside. Play continues. As soon as every attacker has cleared the zone again — the so-called tag-up — he drops his arm and nothing is called; the attack may start over. If an attacker plays the puck or pressures it before the zone is cleared, the whistle goes after all.

Where is the face-off?

After an offside the face-off moves back into the neutral zone, to the face-off dot closest to the infraction — just outside the blue line you crossed too early. The attacking team loses the attack it had built, but is not sent back to its own end.

Icing

Icing is shooting the puck from your own half — from behind the red centre line — across the opponent's goal line without anyone touching it on the way. It is the rule that stops a team under pressure from simply firing the puck down the ice all night.

When it is not icing

Not every long puck across the goal line gets whistled. The main exceptions:

The defending team could have played it. If the linesman judges that a defender — the goalie does not count — could have reached the puck before it crossed the goal line, the icing is waved off.
The team is shorthanded. A team killing a penalty is allowed to dump the puck: there is no icing while shorthanded. That is exactly why a penalty kill can clear the zone so freely.
The puck came straight from a face-off, or it touched an opponent, the goalie or one of the nets along the way. And a puck that does not fully cross the goal line is never icing to begin with.

Why icing hurts

The face-off comes back into the defending zone of the team that iced the puck, deep in their own end. More importantly, that team is not allowed to change lines. The line that just dumped the puck has to stay out there, tired, against a rested line. That is the real punishment; the face-off location is only half the story.

Offsides and Icing Explained
Video by 5th and Goal Sports · Watch on YouTube

Penalties

A player who commits an infraction goes to the penalty box, and his team plays a man short for as long as it lasts. How long depends on how serious the infraction was.

Minor — 2 minutes

The standard penalty. Two minutes in the box and two minutes a man short. A double minor (4 minutes) — a high stick that draws blood, for instance — is two consecutive two-minute penalties.

The calls you will hear most

Tripping (haken): Using a stick, skate or leg to bring an opponent down.
Hooking (hooken): Using the stick as a hook to slow an opponent down.
Holding (vasthouden): Grabbing an opponent or his stick to hold him up.
Slashing (slaan): Chopping at an opponent or at his stick with your own.
High-sticking (hoge stick): Carrying the stick above shoulder height into an opponent. If it draws blood, it becomes a double minor.
Cross-checking: Hitting an opponent with the shaft of the stick held in both hands, with no part of it on the ice.
Interference (hinderen): Impeding a player who does not have the puck — or getting in the goalie's way inside his crease.
Roughing: Unnecessarily rough shoving, pulling or punching, usually after the whistle.
Delay of game: Holding play up: shooting the puck over the boards from your own zone, deliberately shifting the net, or needlessly covering the puck.
Too many men: A sixth skater on the ice during a line change. The team picks which player serves the two minutes.

Major — 5 minutes

The same infraction becomes a major when it is delivered hard, recklessly or dangerously, or when it causes injury: a slash across the wrists, a check to the head, driving someone into the boards. Fighting is almost always a major. The big difference from a minor: a major is served in full. If the opponent scores after thirty seconds, the clock keeps running — they may score five times in those five minutes and the player stays put. A major is also frequently accompanied by a game misconduct.

Misconduct — 10 minutes, and game misconduct

A misconduct sends the player to the box for ten minutes, but the team is not shorthanded: a teammate replaces him on the ice. It is the penalty for conduct towards the officials, persistent complaining, or looking for trouble after the whistle. A game misconduct ends the night for that player: he goes to the dressing room and the league decides on any further sanction.

Penalty shot

A penalty shot is awarded when a player is denied a clear scoring chance by an infraction from behind or from the side while he is alone on the goalie with no defender between them. It is also awarded when a defender — the goalie excepted — closes his hand on the puck in the crease, or deliberately displaces the net during a breakaway or in the closing minutes. The player starts with the puck at centre ice and goes one-on-one with the goalie. He scores or he does not: there is no rebound.

The difference to remember

A minor ends the moment the team on the power play scores — the player comes straight out. A major runs to the last second no matter how many goals go in. That is why taking a major against a good power play so often decides the game.

Every NHL Penalty Explained in 15 Minutes
Video by The NHL Explainer · Watch on YouTube

Power play and penalty kill

The team with the extra man is on the power play; the shorthanded team is killing the penalty. Goals are scored considerably more often on the power play than at even strength, so a penalty is a real risk rather than a formality.

5-on-4

The standard situation: one penalty against. The power play sets up in the attacking zone and moves the puck until a shooting lane opens; the penalty kill defends in a box and tries to clear. Because icing does not apply to the shorthanded team, it can fire the puck from its own goal line into the far corner of the rink.

5-on-3

Two penalties running at once: a two-man advantage, and the most dangerous situation in the game. A team never puts fewer than three skaters plus the goalie on the ice — a third penalty is held and only starts running once the first one expires. If a goal is scored at 5-on-3, only the minor with the most time left to run ends; it becomes 5-on-4 and the second penalty keeps counting down.

Scoring shorthanded

If the team serving the penalty scores — a shorthanded goal — the penalty is unaffected: the player stays in the box and the power play continues. Only a goal by the team with the man advantage ends a minor early.

Delayed penalty

If the referee sees an infraction while the non-offending team has the puck, he raises his arm and lets play continue: the penalty is delayed until the offending team touches the puck. In those seconds the non-offending team almost always pulls the goalie for an extra skater — a risk-free 6-on-5, because the whistle goes the instant the opponent touches the puck. If a goal is scored during that stretch, a signalled minor is wiped out.

How a game is structured

The clock in ice hockey is stop-time: it halts at every whistle and only restarts when the puck is dropped.

Three periods of twenty minutes

An official game is three periods of twenty minutes of playing time, with an intermission between them in which the teams switch ends. Because the clock stops at every whistle, a period takes considerably longer than twenty minutes in real time. If the score is level after three periods, most competitions play an overtime with fewer skaters on the ice — usually 3-on-3 — followed by a shootout.

And in the House League

House league games are often shorter and are regularly played on a running clock; how much time there is depends on the ice booked for that evening. The start time of your game is in the schedule, and your team captain knows how the evening is set up.

See the schedule