Hockey 101: What to learn as the Utah Hockey Club takes off

• Hockey has never been more fun to watch. Games move faster and feature more goal-scoring than ever.

Between the lines: I've never seen a pro hockey game — so I enlisted the help of Axios Twin Cities' Kyle Stokes, a hockey fanatic, to explain the rules of the sport.

How it works: Simply put, hockey is soccer on ice — except instead of a ball, there's a puck, a hard rubber disc that players move with sticks, not their feet.

• Games are played on an ice sheet more than three times larger than a basketball court — hence the need to hide so many Delta Center seats. The seating capacity for a hockey game is 11,131, with the option to activate additional single-goal view seats.
• Twenty players lace up for a game. Six per team — five skaters and a goaltender — are on the ice at any one time.
• The game is played in three 20-minute periods.

Here's some hockey lingo you may come across tonight:

🏒 Faceoff. This starts the game and restarts the action after any stoppage. The referee drops the puck between two players, one from each team, who try to pass it to a teammate.

🚨 Goal. Every team has its own unique horn. (Utah's is great, by the way — reminiscent of two of the league's best: Buffalo and Nashville.)

• The puck must completely cross the red goal line to count as a goal. The NHL uses a video review system.

🧤 A goaltender "freezes" the puck. Referees whistle play dead after a goalie catches or covers a puck shot in their direction.

👮‍♂️ A penalty. Common infractions are for a "high stick" making contact with a player above their shoulders; tripping, or otherwise tugging at an opponent with an outstretched stick ("hooking"); and "holding" or "interference" that impedes an opponent's progress.

• After the whistle, the offending player goes to the penalty box. Then, the player's team must defend with only four skaters on the ice, usually for two minutes, or until the other team scores.
• In the case of more severe infractions, these "power plays" last four or five minutes.

👉 Offside. The puck must completely cross the blue line that denotes the offensive zone before any offensive player does.

🧊 Icing. Unless a team is killing off a penalty, a defending team can't relieve offensive pressure by flinging the puck to the opposite end of the ice.

• If a defender fails to bring the puck to the red line at center ice before "dumping" it down the ice, a linesman will whistle the play dead and bring the puck back to the defensive zone for a faceoff: That's "icing."
• Icing often keeps tired players trapped on the ice: A team that commits icing cannot make player substitutions off the bench before the next faceoff.

Overtime: During the regular season, if two teams are tied after 60 minutes, they play a five-minute sudden-death overtime with three skaters per side. It's the most electrifying OT in North American sports. 🤩

• If OT fails to break the tie, it's followed by a best-of-three penalty shot contest.

The bottom line: "Great moments are born from great opportunity" — and knowing how the game works.

• That quote is from "Miracle," by the way. If you haven't seen it, a viewing is your first assignment.