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stereax · 1 year ago

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Waivers: The Basics

Having noticed that many of my mutuals, as well as hockeyblr at large, are unsure of what exactly the NHL's waiver system means and how it works, I've endeavored to write up a little bit of a primer on waivers to make it easier to understand. Meet me under the cut to learn more!

What are waivers?

Put most simply, waivers are a process that occurs when a team says to a player, "We don't want you in the NHL anymore, we're sending you to the AHL". Because of the CBA's (Collective Bargaining Agreement) Article 13, before they can do this, they have to put the player on the waiver wire, which is essentially a 24-hour-long period where any other team that wants that player to play for them in the NHL can claim them. The purpose of the waiver wire is to ensure that teams don't unfairly stash NHL-caliber players in the AHL, thereby paying them lesser salaries (this is the most important part - AHL salaries are generally about a tenth of NHL salaries) and not allowing them to play NHL games. Players that may not be getting a fair shot on one team can move to another, where they can be used more effectively - for instance, Eeli Tolvanen was waived by Nashville, picked up by Seattle, and now plays a key role on Seattle's third line. In fact, he scored Seattle's first-ever goal in the playoffs!

What happens once a player is put on the waiver wire?

If another team claims the player, they are claimed on waivers and are transferred to the other team. Notably, the other team must have the appropriate cap and roster space necessary to claim the player. An example here is Kasperi Kapanen, who was placed on waivers by Pittsburgh and was claimed by St Louis. His cap hit of $3.2m may have been prohibitive for other teams who could have wanted to claim him.

If multiple teams try to claim the player, the player goes to the team that submitted a claim which is the worst in the standings - if it's before November 1st of a new season year, it goes to the team that finished worst in the standings the year before, but if it's after November 1st, it goes to the team that is currently worst in the standings. Take Lassi Thomson, who was placed on waivers by Ottawa and claimed by Anaheim. If, for example, Toronto also submitted a claim, they would not have been awarded Thomson, as Anaheim has the worse standing.

If no other team claims the player, they clear waivers. When they do so, they can be reassigned to the NHL team's affiliate AHL team. Notably, not everyone who clears waivers is immediately reassigned - a player who clears waivers can stay with the NHL team instead (for example, if another player just got injured). They can be sent down to the AHL at a later time - they do not have to go through the waivers process again if they have played less than 10 NHL games (cumulative) or been on the roster for less than 30 days (cumulative) from the last time they cleared waivers. This can be used to a savvy GM's advantage to avoid putting players on the waiver wire.

Why is everyone getting waived right now?

At the beginning of the preseason, every player with an NHL contract, whether it be one-way (NHL only) or two-way (NHL and AHL), is invited to that team's training camp. This places them on the NHL preseason roster for that team. As training camp goes on and players get cut, they then must pass through waivers to go to the AHL. Unless, of course, they're waiver exempt.

What is waiver exemption and why is it important?

So you might already have noticed an issue with the waiver system - it's terrible for younger players. If solely the waiver rules we've discussed above existed, every player being sent to the AHL would have to go through waivers. This would include prospects who are signed to an NHL ELC (entry-level contract) but didn't make the cut for the season. Obviously, this is bad for teams - imagine drafting players who you know will be good for you in 2 or 3 years and then losing them all to the waiver wire. This is why waiver exemption exists.

Waiver exemption, to keep it simple, is a protection that certain players have that means they do not have to go through the waivers process to be reassigned to the AHL. The specific details of waiver exemption are a little complicated - let's take a look at the table to make it make more sense.

This table is either/or and is defined by the age when their NHL ELC was signed. A skater who signed their ELC as an 18-year-old is waiver exempt for either 5 years or 160 games played (including playoff games) at the NHL level. A skater who signed at 21 is exempt for either 3 years or 80 NHL games. Goalies have different requirements than skaters because they generally take longer to develop and don't play as many games.

There is a fairly common misconception that all players on their ELCs are automatically waiver exempt. This is false. The second a player hits the amount of games played for their age, they are immediately no longer waiver exempt. Usually, this doesn't occur until after the ELC is over, as most ELC players deal with injuries and healthy scratches, as well as not generally being given the reins to play on the NHL roster for the entire season. One notable example that disproves the "ELC means waiver exempt" conception is Dawson Mercer from New Jersey. Mercer signed his ELC as a 19-year-old in December of 2020. He has played all 82 games in the past 2 seasons (2021-22 & 2022-23) plus 12 playoff games for a total of 176 NHL games played. Under the games requirements, he is now no longer exempt from waivers, despite having one whole year left on his ELC.

For the 25+ category, upon playing a single NHL game, the player is waiver exempt for that entire season and that entire season only. Andrei Kuzmenko from Vancouver is a good example of that - last season, he signed his one-year ELC with Vancouver as a 27-year-old and could have been sent to the AHL at any time without going through waivers. (He was not, needless to say.)

There is one very important exception to the table: if an 18- or 19-year-old player plays 11 or more games with an NHL team in a single season, their waiver exemption is automatically cropped. For that season, and the next two, the player is waiver exempt, but after that, they are no longer exempt. This extends to the next three if the player in question is a goalie and not a skater. (To make it easier to understand, it's as if they jumped into the 20-year-old category.) However, 18- and 19-year-old prospects generally only play 9 games maximum at the NHL level in order to allow for the entry-level slide, allowing the contract to "slide" forward a year, letting teams keep the player on the ELC for an extra year and thus save money.

Are there any other ways a player can play in the AHL without going through waivers or being waiver exempt?

Yes, actually! There are two main exceptions - they're for conditioning loans.

First, what is a conditioning loan? A conditioning loan is a short-term reassignment to the AHL. There are two types of conditioning loans: the standard conditioning loan and the LTIR conditioning loan.

A standard conditioning loan, specified under the CBA 13.8, occurs when a player agrees to head down to the AHL for a few games to "wipe off the dust" on their game, so to speak. They're often used by players who have ended up as perennial healthy scratches on their NHL teams, so that they're able to jump in if there's an injury or other issue. Standard conditioning loans can last up to 14 days. One example of a standard conditioning loan is Shane Wright, who was sent to the AHL by Seattle very early in the season for conditioning, partially to bypass the requirement that the NHL has with the major junior CHL that would have required him to go back to the CHL were he officially reassigned from Seattle. Another is Nathan Beaulieu, who was sent to the AHL by Anaheim in January for a four-game stint.

An LTIR conditioning loan, specified under the CBA 13.9, occurs when a player coming off of LTIR agrees to head down to the AHL for a few games to "wipe off the dust" on their game, so to speak. These loans can only last 6 days or 3 games, whichever comes later, and the idea is to be able to figure out whether a player is able to return to form or requires more time to heal properly. For example, Travis Dermott was sent to the AHL by Vancouver in December to evaluate whether he was back to form after a concussion sustained in the preseason. He played one game in the AHL, then drew back into Vancouver's lineup for eleven games before going back on IR for the rest of the season due to the concussion repercussions. Notably, a team can only use one LTIR conditioning loan for each time a player is on LTIR.

What is emergency recall and why does it make a player waiver exempt?

Emergency recall occurs when a player on a team's NHL lineup is injured and the team can no longer ice a full squad because of it. (As a reminder, each team must carry 12 forwards, 6 defensemen, and 2 goalies. Usually, teams keep an extra forward and defenseman around as a healthy scratch in case of injuries, but some teams are pressed against the cap and cannot carry extra players.) In this case, they can call an AHL player (or multiple, at times) up on an "emergency" basis to fill in during the time that the NHL player is out. Once the NHL player is healthy again, the AHL player can either be transferred to a regular recall or gets sent down to their AHL team again. One example here is Akira Schmid, who was bouncing back and forth between Utica and New Jersey on emergency recalls every few weeks because Mackenzie Blackwood, one of New Jersey's two goaltenders, was constantly getting hurt.

It makes sense, then, why emergency recall would grant a player temporary waiver exemption status - it would be awful to have to recall a player from the AHL, have them in the NHL for a little bit, and then have to send them through waivers and get claimed when your roster player is healthy. However, if an emergency recall player plays in at least 10 NHL games, he loses his waiver exempt status under emergency recall (other forms of waiver exemption still apply).

What are unconditional waivers?

Unconditional waivers are different from regular waivers in what they do. Passing through unconditional waivers does not send you to the AHL. Instead, they are used by teams that want to buy out or terminate players' contracts, completely giving up their rights to the players. Players placed on unconditional waivers are almost never claimed because of this - only two players have ever been claimed off unconditional waivers.

Okay, hold on - what's the difference between a buyout and a termination?

A termination occurs when a player's contract is terminated. The player severs all ties to a team and does not continue to be paid by the team. The team does not incur any cap penalties from termination. There are two main types of termination.

The first type of termination is mutually-agreed-upon termination. In the case of Filip Zadina, who was recently terminated by Detroit, he made it clear that he would refuse to report to the AHL after being sent down on regular waivers. The team and Zadina then proceeded to terminate the contract so that Zadina would be free to negotiate a contract with another NHL team instead of playing for Detroit's AHL team, and so that Detroit would not incur any cap penalties from buying out Zadina. Another example is Lukas Sedlak, whose contract was terminated by Philadelphia when he made it clear to the team that he wanted to return to Europe to play. Philadelphia put Sedlak on unconditional waivers, terminated the contract, and Sedlak soon returned to his native Czechia to play for Pardubice.

The other, rarer type of termination is for material breach. Material breach termination is exemplified by Alex Galchenyuk, whose contract was terminated by Arizona after they became aware of the intoxicated driving incident involving Galchenyuk. Essentially, material breach is used when players are acting illegally, either against the law of the United States/Canada, or against the terms of their contract. The reason these terminations are so rare is twofold: Not only are hockey players generally going to try to avoid breaking the law, when they do, the player's association is usually going to investigate and file appeals and the like to try to secure their players the highest possible settlement despite the termination (and set a precedent so other teams are not encouraged to terminate contracts for material breach).

On the other hand, a buyout occurs when a player is released by a team, but the player continues to be paid by the team as per their contract. The team incurs cap penalties from buyouts - 1/3 of the contract value if the player is younger than 26 at the time of the buy-out, 2/3 of the value if the player is 26 or order. This penalty is spread across double the years left on the contract.

An aside - this is also where the idea of a "buyout-proof" contract comes in. A buyout-proof contract contains most of the salary being paid in the form of signing bonuses, which are paid in full even if the contract is bought out. (These contracts are also considered "lockout-proof", as, again, the signing bonus must be paid even if there is a lockout and no hockey is being played.) As an example of this, take a look at Auston Matthews's extension:

If the Leafs try to buy this contract out, they'd have to pay Matthews the entirety of the signing bonuses as well as 2/3 of the base salary, making the cap savings incredibly marginal and just not worth it to buy out. Thus, it's buyout-proof.

Is that everything I need to know about waivers?

I think so! If you have any other questions, please drop me a line in my inbox or via DMs - I'll be happy to explain more to you! :D

#stereanalysis #stereducation #hockey primer #waivers primer

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korshrimpski · 2 months ago

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UTAH HOCKEY CLUB PRIMER

so i completely forgot i made this lol, please note i made this 2 months ago

OTHER THINGS NOTES:

we have signed Kailer Yamamoto to a PTO (professional tryout) so he might pop up on the roster

#enjoy my ramblings #utah hockey club #utah hc #uhc #nhl #hockey primer

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nonametis · 15 days ago

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Welcome to Tepsi Primer Season 2024-25!

the team has changed since last year so I tried my hand at making a new primer, here we go under the cut!

i hope that's all of the slides. and somewhat informative.

And here, the currently used versions of Hunajata and Dirlanda on youtube!

#hockey primer #tps #liiga

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100ducksizedfolignos · 1 year ago

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covering hopefully all these points:

hockeyblr is vaster than you could imagine and there are enclaves for just about every team on here (obv some are more popular than others)

i’m 100% certain there are people that have become hockey fans bc of gritty so you are in good company

people LOVE liveblogging games, generally the liveblog tag is [team name] lb, so kraken lb in your case

we love to meme around here. worry not.

we love having new people!! if there’s anything you don’t understand feel free to ask. helpful to me when i was starting out was ofgeography’s i can hockey and so can you primer series

we’re deep in the offseason right now - rookie camps will be starting in september, followed by training camps, followed by preseason games in early october, and the season itself starts in mid-october and runs through mid-april. postseason runs from then to early/mid-june, followed by the draft in late june, followed by free agency opening up on july 1

some hockey games will be on national tv, but mostly not. as an out-of-market fan, almost all kraken games would be watchable on espn+ if that’s a service you have or are interested in having. there are also Other Sites, but protocol for those is to be shared in dms only (to try to avoid legal trouble for them), so ask me if you’re having trouble finding those

while it’s most common to cheer for your local team it is also extremely common to cheer for any team for any reason - there’s a specific player you like (i know someone who’s a panthers fan bc she got very attached to bobrovsky on their cup finals run), you like the branding and theming, they have a good track record on social issues, you just like The Vibes - any reason at all

please enjoy your time on hockeyblr :) glad to have you here

I decided I want to get into hockey but have zero idea how. Is there a side of tumblr for hockey fans? I decided I like the kraken specifically for their silly little mascot. Do people live post about games? Do y’all have inside jokes and make silly memes? Is there chronically online hockey fans that welcome people who don’t really know anything but just want to be involved in something? There’s a blaseball shaped hole in my heart and I’m filling it with real sports

#i guess this is a #hockey primer

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100ducksizedfolignos · 1 year ago

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FANTASY HOCKEY FOR TUMBLRINAS: A GUIDE

been curious about fantasy but have no idea how it works? and whatever guides google deigns to give you are not helping? do you live in canada or minnesota and have your coworkers managed to press-gang you into their fantasy hockey league and you don’t want to embarrass yourself? welcome! i have one whole season of fantasy hockey experience and managed to get second place in my league so i’m probably qualified to take you through this. strap in and hopefully this isn’t incoherent because i have extremely limited visual aids available!

PART 1: HOW IT WORKS

first, the two major fantasy sites are going to be yahoo fantasy and espn fantasy. which you use is probably determined by which one your league commissioner (person who made your league) likes better. disclaimer: basically all of my experience is with yahoo fantasy.

so before we get to talking about the draft - the first thing you do in your fantasy sports journey - let’s talk about what you’re drafting your favorite little hockey men for.

the goal of fantasy hockey is to win either head-to-head matchups or your group as a whole (depending on the settings of your league, to my knowledge head-to-head is more common) in individual stat categories that fall into two groups - skater stats and goalie stats. for instance, if all your skaters got more goals over the course of a week than your opponent’s skaters, you would win the point in that category. if your opponent’s goalies had a better average save percentage than your goalies, they would get the point in that category.

all stats are cumulative across your entire roster, for the record. even save percentage and goals allowed average for goalies, which are averaged out, use every goaltender appearance.

if your win-loss record is good enough (for some leagues, each category separately counts towards your record - for example if your league has 11 categories and you win 6, lose 4, and draw 1, your record is 6-4-1, not 1-0 - and for other leagues, each stat adds to a cumulative point total in different weights, i.e. goals worth 1, assists worth .5, etc., and whoever's total is higher wins), towards the end of the season you make your league’s playoffs, where you duke it out for the title.

there are two commonly-used sets of skater stats, which have become the ways people define fantasy hockey leagues as a whole: points leagues and “bangers” leagues.

points leagues use, as you can imagine, different points categories for skaters. the most common set of these is goals, assists, and power play points. potentially plus or minus shorthanded points depending on your league. bangers leagues, on the other hand, usually use those three stats plus shots on goal, hits, and blocked shots. this makes player selection more multifaceted and interesting and shifts the balance of who has more value in a given league. brady tkachuk is maybe the exemplar of a player who gains a ton of value in bangers leagues due to him having good points totals while also putting up a lot of value in those banger stats. i had esa lindell in my team last season, who put up a whole 24 points, none of them on the power play, but was still valuable to me because he had a lot of hits and blocked shots and helped me win those categories on a pretty regular basis.

you may be looking furiously on normal websites to figure out a player’s banger stats. you will not find them. ask me how i know this. your most reliable source of player stats is going to be the fantasy websites themselves, and you can look through player databases without having a team. yahoo, at least, even lets you do mock drafts, if you want to get cozy with the ui and the experience before you do it for realsies.

(a sample of what a fantasy stats page might look like. this particular one is displaying player stats from last season. if unfamiliar with stat abbreviations, in order, they are: games played, goals, assists, power play points, shorthanded points, shots on goal, hits, blocked shots.)

(same as above, but for goalies. stats in order: games started, wins, goals allowed, saves, shutouts, overtime losses.)

goalie stats are usually wins, goals allowed average, saves, and shutouts. plus or minus save percentage or overtime losses, depending on your site and settings. these are all pretty straightforward, with the small wrinkle of “do you take a better goalie on a worse team knowing he’ll win less but have better other stats” vs “do you take a more average goalie on a better team knowing he’ll be better supported by his system which might help his stats and definitely get him more wins”.

PART 2: THE DRAFT

now that you know what you’re looking for, let’s talk about the draft.

most fantasy drafts are “snake drafts”, meaning the pick order flips every round, in interest of fairness. while most pro sports drafts are the same order every round (1→16, 1→16, 1→16, etc.), they have history to fall back on. poor teams need better players to build around, while better teams already have those players. but in the average fantasy league, everyone is starting from zero. so the order goes 1→16, 16→1, 1→16, etc. for as many rounds as your draft goes. the person who picked last in the first round gets to pick first in the second round, and so on.

what you’re looking for here is highly dependent on your team settings. does your league just distinguish forwards from defense from goalies? or does forward position matter? (if it does, know a player is not locked into a spot once you use him there - he can play any of his listed positions at any given time, whether or not he actually plays that spot in the lineup. for instance, joe pavelski is listed as both a center and right wing - despite the fact he rarely plays center, you can deploy him there on any given night. or you could deploy him at right wing, if that’s where your opening is.)

i’m going to take you through this with the settings used by my last league.

in my league, you had 16 guys on your roster. 2C, 2LW, 2RW, 4D, 2G, and 4 guys on the bench (who, if they played that day, their stats would not be added to any of your totals, although this was rarely an issue). so on my team, i usually had 8 forwards, with at least 3 people able to play each position, 5 defensemen, and 3 goalies. your league might have a bigger roster, it might not have a bench, it might not care about where forwards play as long as they’re forwards, and this all influences the spread of who you draft and when. if your league calls for - in the case of espn’s default league settings - 9 forwards, 5 defensemen, 1 utility player (put another way, any skater), 2 goalies, and 5 guys on the bench, well, you probably take 12 or 13 forwards, 7 or 8 defensemen, and 3 goalies, and it’s on you how you prioritize the order of that.

really, the important parts of the draft are the first few rounds, when you pick the really high-end guys. later-round players are easier to swap out for each other - which you can do! any guy not drafted is considered a free agent, and if you draft a guy who’s underperforming, you can swap him out for an undrafted guy who’s doing better. so don’t sweat the later rounds too much beyond what roles you need to fill. you can let your fantasy site’s ranking board help you out there.

lightning round q&a:

when do you pick a goalie? generally people go the same way nhl teams do in the entry draft - probably not in the first round unless he’s a really sure thing to an extent that he’s more valuable than whatever top skaters are still there.

can you run with just 2 goalies? if you are extremely confident that your 2 goalies combined can match the output of other teams going with 3 goalies. if you have a vasilevskiy or a sorokin or the type of goalie who is a clear starter and plays at a high level for those starts and your other goalie is giving good starts, then yeah maybe you can run with 2. i did for a bit. take the third goalie though, it’ll make your life so much less stressful, especially if your league has a minimum amount of goalie appearances requirement (mine did - your goalies had to make 3 appearances a week for their stats to count at all).

when do banger stats become more valuable than points? i wish i had a clear answer for that. you just gotta feel it out, man. broadly, when a player’s point total starts to get into average territory, then probably start really looking for those banger stats to maximize value. but if a guy has notable banger stats then maybe you take him before point totals get average. no good answer to this one, sorry

is there any reason for mcdavid not to be 1oa, even in bangers? no, and anyone who tries otherwise is being contrarian for the sake of it. if you luck out getting 1oa just take mcdavid. come on.

if you pick last in the first round, are you boned? well i picked last and got second place, so no you are not :)

when do you make a “reach” pick? as you’re drafting, you’ll have a list of players ranked by the site in front of you. use that to help but not as a bible. you reach when you think someone will take a player before you get to pick again, and the difference between that player and the next player on your list is worth the risk.

idk if people have more questions i can make another post or something. maybe you don’t have any of these questions. i hope it was useful anyways

PART 3: FANTASYING

here’s the meat-and-potatoes nitty-gritty of it all. here’s a very retro view of what your team hub might look like - note the ui absolutely does not look like this anymore:

you can actually see on here what i was talking about earlier with that “guys who play multiple positions can be used in either/any” thing. malkin is listed as both a center and a right wing, and is deployed as a center here, but if, say, this person wanted to bring in derek roy but still use malkin, he could put roy in malkin’s center spot and move malkin to bump selanne or jagr to the bench.

good news! i did manage to find someone’s screenshot with something similar to current app ui:

player stats for the week would be under where it says no game, but you can actually see the ir+ spot in use and what the general layout looks like. actually, speaking of ir-

let’s talk about ir real quick. and this bit is all based on yahoo fantasy, so if espn does this different, i’m sorry and you’re on your own

so! if your team has a dedicated ir+ spot, you can put any guy who is officially listed as out (O, as keller is above), injured reserve (IR), or long-term injured reserve (LTIR) there, and he will not count against your roster total. you have a limited amount of these spots, so probably don’t get landeskog, confirmed to be missing the whole season, and stick him on there, although you can and it won’t affect your main team at all. it would only be a problem if with him you have more injured guys than there are ir+ spots. with this, you could even draft a guy starting the season injured, like a brandon montour, stick him on an ir+ spot, and get a fill-in guy out of free agency afterwards (since you’ll only be drafting enough players to field a team without any injuries), if you think that when he’s healthy, he’ll boost your team enough to be worth missing out on a player of the caliber of where you drafted him. so if a player on your team gets injured and you have ir+ spots, use them! pull a guy out of free agency to take the injured player’s spot and go about your merry business knowing you can still field a full team.

anyways - as before, only the players off the bench (in the white spaces on this ui) count towards your totals. so, and i cannot stress this enough, MAKE SURE YOUR PLAYING PLAYERS ARE ACTUALLY PLAYING AND ADDING TO YOUR STAT TOTALS. much heartbreak has been had by people who have forgotten to do this. yahoo has a fun little button that will automatically do this for you, but only for the week, so keep up with that, too. (for purposes of fantasy, weeks start on mondays btw.) it might also not always start the people you want starting if there’s more guys playing that night than there are spots on your starting roster, so watch for that, too. like if you have 4 defense spots and you have 5 defensemen playing that night, decide which one’s stats you’re most okay with missing out on. players only lock in once their game time comes around, so you do usually have the entire day to decide. you might be influenced by where your matchups are standing - if you’re definitely losing your assists matchup, but your hits matchup is close, you might sit your points-producing defenseman in favor of your big hitter. stuff like that.

and that’s actually pretty much it! even playoffs work the same way. once you’ve got your team, the day-to-day of fantasy is pretty simple. make sure your players are playing, adjust your team with free agents if necessary, conveniently ignore trade requests if they suck (as far as i can tell trading is more prolific in irl fantasy groups where people know each other better, we had like no trades in my online league of strangers last season), root on some guys you’ve never heard of before because you need them, and have fun!

#hockey guides #fantasy hockey #hockey primer #hockey #nhl #op #i hope this is good.

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stereax · 1 year ago

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likes and reblogs highly appreciated here!!! spent a ton of time on this, hope it shows!

(and kudos to the discord crew who put up with me spamming them with pages of this and giving me the thumbs-up about it - love you all!!!)

let's go devils!!!

#new jersey devils #nj devils #devils primer #hockey primer #nhl #devils lb #devs lb #stereanalysis #stereducation

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three-headed-monster · 5 months ago

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draft mini primer! it's tradition at this point, so i had to, but i'll be real, i don't know too much about these boys. but i hope this might lead you to your next favourite little guy, so happy draft day!

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coffee-at-annies · 1 year ago

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Love this! I had some thoughts while reading this and wanted to add on. If I’m at too high a level or I’m going too deep into specifics lmk.

Face offs:

it’s when everyone lines up in a circle around where the referee will drop the puck. One skater from each team will line up to try and basically get stick on puck first and try to hit it in the direction of their teammates behind them. I love that you shared a rink diagram because the dark red dots are faceoff dots. The red outlines with hash marks are called the face off circles. Depending on where or why play was stopped determines where the faceoff is. This can be in the offensive zone, defensive zone, one of the dots between blue lines, or the blue dot in the middle of the red line that signifies center ice. They always drop the puck at center ice for the start of a period and after goals.

It is not really important to understand faceoff strategy at all, the tldr of it is offensive zone=good, defensive zone=bad, face off win=good, your team has the puck, face off loss=bad, other team has it. The goods are important because sometimes when you win an offensive zone face off you can immediately put it on (or in) the goal. This can leave a crowd confused because it can be very quick. Puck control is important for keeping it in your offensive zone or getting it out of your defensive zone.

Above is an example of a face off leading to a goal for the team in black (Pittsburgh Penguins). The ref drops the puck, one player from each team (white is the Vancouver Canucks) fights over the puck, the penguin (Evgeni Malkin), knocks it between his legs to his teammate behind him who shoots it at the net and scores. (source - Maljc)

Penalties:

if you want to actually care about the rules, that’s where penalties come in. They’re the no-nos of hockey. You are not required to know them, but you’ll start to recognize certain common ones, and a crowd will start screaming if they think a ref has missed calling an obvious penalty. @reavenedges-lies has the nhl rulebook downloaded and does a good job of explaining why something was a penalty when asked (they also post screenshots of the relevant rules section for extra clarity).

The only thing I want to add here is sometimes members of each team draw/commit a penalty at the same time. Sometimes that means 4 on 4 hockey. Sometimes (most often with fights) it’s considered offsetting penalties. Basically both teams ended up with players in the box so it’ll stay 5 on 5 and players will exit the penalty box at the next whistle or TV timeout.

Oh wait! The penalty box is a literal box on the opposite side of the ice from the bench. You don’t see it often unless there’s a closeup of someone in it. Each team has a separate compartment. That’s why it’s called the sin bin or timeout - players literally have to sit and watch their teammates play without them. When time expires without the team on the power play scoring the player is allowed to exit the box and immediately resume playing. If it’s a 5 on 3 situation, they’ll likely skate straight into the defensive zone to help defense. Sometimes they’ll go straight to the bench for a change if they aren’t the best person on the ice and there’s time for a change. Sometimes the team on the penalty kill will get the puck right as time expires on the penalty and will attempt to pass it to the person exiting the box so that they can have a breakaway.

Misc:

I had some thoughts about explaining common terminology you’ll hear from announcers like 2 on 0, giveaway, etc but honesty if you’ve got a good announcer then what they’re saying will match up with what’s on the tv screen in a way that makes sense. If you’re struggling to understand the action and the tv commentary isn’t helping, radio broadcasts tend to be slightly more descriptive since there’s no video to lean on. It may be helpful to have the radio on with the tv muted and see if you’re tracking things better.

Only thing worth adding is Bonus Hockey (aka overtime and the shootout). It’s not necessary for understanding the game but I’m gonna add a simple description since its fairly straightforward. Overtime is sudden death hockey - next goal wins. In the regular season it’s 5 minutes long and 3v3. If a penalty happens it becomes 4v3. If it’s still tied after 5 minutes they go to the shootout. It’s 3 rounds of 1v1 , skater vs goalie trying to score. Best record after 3 wins the game. If it’s tied they keep going until the score is no longer tied.

How to watch hockey for people who don’t watch sports: a beginner’s guide (with gifs!)

If you’ve never watched ice hockey before, a game can seem like nothing more than a bunch of players in colorful jerseys moving back and forth across the ice. Most people can appreciate a smooth move or a great save, but what’s happening during all that play that doesn’t make the highlight reels? And how does it relate to the narrative of your team(s) and/or player(s)?

This is not a list of rules because, in my experience, lists of rules aren't that helpful for novices that don’t already follow a sport, and are widely available besides. Instead, this is a guide to some common scenarios that those rules create and how loudly you should yell at your television while they’re happening.

(This is also not a guide for finding a broadcast of a hockey game. Hockey broadcasts are available at, ahem, a wide variety of price points via cable, official streaming, or miscellaneous other internet sources which one can learn about elsewhere.)

Don’t worry about following the puck!

“The puck is so small! How do you see it?” Don’t worry about that. Watch where the players are going: they almost always know where the puck is, so by watching their positioning and body language, you’ll know where it is, too! (It might take you a little while to get the hang of this, but don't stress; you'll get there.) You can imagine how difficult it must have been to see the puck on an old television, and yet people have been watching hockey on TV since live sports broadcasts were invented. If the location of the puck is particularly important, the broadcast will do a slo-mo replay.

In the first gif, a player shoots the puck and the goaltender makes a save as the puck slides across the ice. In the second gif, the same event is shown in slow motion. [src]

The basics

There are five skaters and a goalie on the ice for each team. Over the course of three (not four!) 20-minute periods, they will use their hockey sticks to try to get the puck into the opposing team’s net to score a goal. The team with more goals wins. If the game is tied at the end of the third period, it goes to overtime, which has different rules. At the beginning of the game and whenever the whistle blows to stop play, play will (re)start with a "faceoff," where the referee will drop a puck down between two opposing players. If your team “draws” a penalty (has a penalty committed against them), they will be on the "power play."

Power play & penalty kill

A player that commits a penalty is sent to the “penalty box” (a.k.a. the sin bin) and has to stay there for the duration of the penalty. Their team has to play with one fewer players on the ice while their player is in the box; that penalized team is now on the “penalty kill.” The other team, which now has more skaters on the ice, is on the power play and has a “man advantage.”

A regular minor penalty lasts for two minutes or until the team on the power play scores a goal. (A major penalty is five minutes, and does not end if the team on the power play scores a goal.) A power play is one of the best opportunities to score!

Most often, one player is in the box at a time, and the game will be five skaters on one team vs. four skaters on the other team. Penalties can stack, so sometimes you will end up with five-on-three or four-on-four or four-on-three play. However, each team will always have at least three skaters.

The team in dark uniforms (the Colorado Avalanche) have five skaters on the ice, while the team in light uniforms (the New York Rangers) have four. Colorado is on the power play, and New York is on the penalty kill. Notice the extra blue clock in the corner counting down the time remaining in Colorado’s power play. [src]

Things that are good

You want your team to have control of the puck, of course, but what do you want to see past that? Watch for two good scenarios that are easy for novices to spot: a “chance off the rush” or “getting set up in the zone.”

A chance off the rush means that your team is skating down the ice towards the other team’s goal in possession of the puck, one or more skaters going across the blue line and towards the goal while the other team fails to stop them. Some teams score most of their goals like this! Hopefully, your team can get in a good shot on goal “off the rush” before they get tangled up with the opposing team. Feel free to yell “shoot!” at your television to encourage them.

Here a New York Islanders (white jerseys) player gets the puck, goes down the ice, and creates a chance off the rush as the Islanders approach the Minnesota Wild’s (dark jerseys) goal. One Islander passes the puck to his teammate, who shoots the puck into the upper left corner of the net to score a goal. [src]

“Getting set up in the zone” means that all five skaters on your team are “in the zone,” or across the blue line, and arranged in front of the other team’s goal. You want to see your team set up in a rough circle and in complete possession of the puck, passing it back and forth to each other and bouncing it off the boards (the wall around the ice) until a player sees a good opportunity and takes a shot. Again, you can yell “shoot the puck!” at your television here. It might even help!

Let’s go back to this gif. Notice how Colorado (dark uniforms) are set up around the outside of the zone, with one guy in the middle, and are passing the puck back and forth until one of them sees a good shot and takes it. The way the players are arranged will look different during regular five-on-five play vs. during a power play, but the basic principle (around the zone, one player by the net, controlling the puck) remains the same.

The zones

What are these zones I keep referencing? Notice the blue lines dividing the ice in three. The area behind the blue line with the net your team is defending is “your team’s zone” or “the defensive zone.” The other end of the ice with the net the other team is defending is “the other team’s zone” or “the offensive zone.” In between is “the neutral zone.”

If Team A is protecting the goal on the left, the left part of the ice is “Team A’s zone” or their “defensive zone.” The right part of the ice is “the offensive zone” or sometimes “the attacking zone.” For Team B, protecting the net on the right, this diagram would be reversed. [src]

When “entering the offensive zone”—going over the blue line—the puck or the person carrying the puck must be first over the blue line. If you don’t have the puck and you are the first across the blue line, you are “offsides.”

Notice in the bottom right of this gif how all the players in light jerseys (the New York Rangers) pause at the blue line to let the Rangers player with the puck (furthest right) cross the blue line first. [src]

There is one extremely important consequence of this rule: when the puck is knocked “out of the zone” back across the blue line, every player on the attacking team has to leave the zone (go back across the blue line) and re-enter.

In my experience, understanding this one simple consequence of the offsides rule unlocks a much deeper understanding of how hockey works.

(It proved difficult to find a gif of the puck being knocked out of the zone and players regrouping. I looked for a long time. I’ll keep looking and update this guide when I find one. It happens a lot, but people don't often include it when gif-ing.)

Things that are bad

You don’t want to see an opposing player streaking down the ice with nothing between them and the goal except the goalie. This is a “breakaway.” Not great for your team!

Here’s an old gif of Jaromír Jágr, playing for the New Jersey Devils (red jerseys), scoring a goal on a breakway. [src]

When your team is stuck in their own zone while the other team has full control of the puck and is passing it amongst themselves at their leisure, set up in your zone—this is bad. At the very least you want your team to interfere and move the puck out across the blue line, therefore forcing the other team to all exit your zone. (You can yell “get it out! Oh my God! Clear the puck out of the zone!” at your television at this point.)

If your team is trapped in their own zone for too long, they start to run into a major issue: they can’t “change.”

Changing

One of the biggest differences between hockey and other major sports in North America is the concept of changing. Skaters only spend a short amount of time (a “shift”) on the ice, then skate to the bench where their teammates are waiting and switch places, sitting on the bench while a teammate takes their place on the ice. NHL shifts are only about 45 seconds long!

On the upper left of this gif, notice the team in dark jerseys (the New York Rangers) all changing—players on the ice swapping places with players on the bench. The Rangers have knocked the puck out of the zone and take the opportunity to change, since they’re tired. But they didn’t have as much time as they thought, and the team in light jerseys (the Tampa Bay Lightning) takes advantage of that to score a goal. [src]

It’s a bad idea to change if the other team has possession of the puck, since during the time it takes you to skate to the bench and your replacement to skate out to the play, your team has one fewer skater available to be involved with the play and is at a disadvantage.

Look in the top left of this gif: the team in dark jerseys (the Arizona Coyotes) swaps out two players while the team in light jerseys (the Dallas Stars) is trapped in their own zone. Dallas can’t change, since a player taking the time to swap out would put them at a severe disadvantage, and as a result they will grow tired and slow while Arizona can put fresh skaters on the ice. [src]

Skaters are grouped together into “lines” (three forwards) and “pairs” (two defenders), and tend to swap out as a group. This way, they’re usually playing with the same other players. The goalie doesn’t change, although there are special circumstances where they may leave the ice so their team can add an extra skater.

Changing can happen during a stoppage in play after the whistle blows, or “on the fly,” meaning during play.

When the camera is focused on a player by themself near or behind their team’s goal, stickhandling the puck with nobody in sight besides maybe a single opposing player coming into their zone, both teams are likely taking the opportunity to change off-camera.

There are only two players visible in the beginning of this gif because all the other players are changing. The camera follows the puck instead of showing the changing players. (Spot the player jumping over the boards in the upper right.) [src]

Other things to watch and listen for

Something you can do that might help you get a feel for the rhythm of the game is to pick a single player (because you like their number, you think their name is cool, you think they’re hot, you recognize their name, literally whatever) and track them. When do they get on the ice? When do they get off? Are they put on for the power play or the penalty kill? This can be hard at first, since television doesn’t always show line changes, so don’t worry too much if you have trouble. But giving it a try might help you learn something!

Listen to the sound cues of the game as well. The crowd knows when a particularly good scoring chance develops, or when the puck gets knocked out of the zone, and they’ll get louder. The play-by-play announcers will raise their voices when something exciting happens, as well.

As time goes on, you’ll find it easier and easier to follow a game! You’ll know where the puck is without looking for it and you might even be able to recognize players by skating style alone.

If possible, try to get to a game in-person. Being able to see everything that’s happening on the ice instead of being restricted by what a broadcast camera shows really helps! There are lower-level professional hockey leagues in many places you wouldn’t expect to find them (everywhere from Alabama to Australia), as well as high school and college games. Tickets will be cheap and you’ll learn a lot.

Hopefully, you’ll now be able to watch a hockey game and see something more than people skating back and forth!

A quick review of all the terms I snuck in there:

Two opposing hockey teams compete to score goals by putting the puck in each other’s net. Each team has five skaters and one goalie on the ice, except when there has been one or more penalties; then, one team is on the power play and has a man advantage, while the penalized team is on the penalty kill. Teams change their players every minute or so, but try to keep players grouped by forward line or defensive pair. Changing can happen on the fly or during a stoppage in play, after which play is restarted with a faceoff. You want your team to bring the puck into the other team’s zone; when that happens, you can watch for scenarios like a chance off the rush or getting set up in the zone. After three twenty-minute-long periods of play, the team with more goals wins the game.

There’s a lot more I could talk about: types of penalties, checking, fighting and the concept of a code of honor, the cult of goalies, dumping the puck, controlled/uncontrolled zone entries/exits, breakouts, umbrella/overload/1-3-1 powerplays, forechecks and backchecks, cycling the puck, or even just icing… but this should be enough to get you started! And that list should give you something more to google.

And of course, if you have any questions, I’m always happy to talk about hockey! My askbox and DMs are open.