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Ice hockey is a game between two teams, each usually having six players (goaltender, three forwards and two defensemen), who wear skates and, using long curved sticks, compete on an ice rink. The object is to propel a vulcanized rubber disk, the puck, past a goal line and into a net guarded by a goaltender, or goalie. A rough, action-packed game, ice hockey is considered to be one of the fastest of all sports. With its speed and its frequent physical contact, ice hockey has become one of the most popular of international sports. It is played in about 30 countries, principally in North America, Europe, and the countries of the former USSR. Ice hockey is especially popular in Canada, where the modern game developed.

Most historians place the roots of hockey in chilly climes of northern Europe, specifically Great Britain and France, where field hockey was popular summer sport more than 500 years ago. When the ponds and lakes froze in winter, it was not unusual for the athletes who fancied that sport to play a version of it on ice. An ice game known as kolven was popular in Holland in the 17th century.

A game called bandy was so popular in England in the 1820s, and the players used to scramble around the town`s frozen meadowlands, swatting a wooden ball with wooden sticks. Articles in London newspapers around that time mention increasing interest in the sport, which many observers believe got its name from the Old French word “hoquet” (shepherd`s crook).

Not surprisingly, the earliest North American ice hockey games were played in Canada. British soldiers stationed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, were reported to have organized contests on frozen ponds in and around that city in the 1870s, and about that same time in Montreal students from McGill University began facing off against each other in a downtown ice rink. Hockey became so popular that games were soon being played on a regular basis between clubs from Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. The English Governor General of Canada, Lord Stanley of Preston, was so impressed that in 1892 he bought a silver bowl with an interior gold finishand decreed that it be given each year to the best amateur team in Canada. That trophy, of course, has come to be known as the Stanley Cup and is awarded today to the team that wins the National Hockey League playoffs.

The beginning of the 20th Century brought a new dimension to ice hockey – the professional player. The first professional league formed in 1904 in the United States in Michigan. In 1909, the National Hockey Association was founded in Montreal. Beginning in 1912, professional teams were allowed to compete for the Stanley Cup.

Other pro leagues were set up in the years prior to World War I. The war disrupted hockey organizations and in 1917, a new professional league was formed with five Canadian teams: the Montreal Wanderers, the Montreal Canadians, the Ottawa Senators, the Quebec Bulldogs, and the Toronto Arenas. The new league was christened the National Hockey League (NHL). The first US team to become part of the league was the Boston Bruins who joined in 1924. Today, the NHL has 30 teams from Canada and the United States.

In the summer of 1972the sport`s popularity received another boost with a fight-game competition between Canada`s best professionals and the top players from the USSR`s Central Red Army team. The series came down to the last game, which the Canadians won on a firs minute goal scored by Paul Henderson, who remains a national hero. A fierce rivalry was born, and a subsequent series took place in 1974. Other games beteen Soviet teams and NHL clubs later in the decade gave more attention to international ice hockey. At the same time, the NHL continued to thrive. Notable standouts of the period included forward Bobby Hull, who scored 610 NHL goals, Bobby Orr, an innovative defensemen who played chiefly with the Boston Bruins; and Vladislav Tretiak, a Russian goaltender who in 1989 became the first non-North American to be inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.

In 1979, the entry of the 18-year-old center Wayne Gretzky into professional play marked the beginning of unprecedented popularity for ice-hockey. Gretzky, who came to be called 'The Great One”, dominated the league over the next 15 years with a streak of unprecedented scoring accomplishments.

The break-ups of communist nations such as Czechoslovakia and the USSR in the early 1990s enabled more European players (such as Pavel Bure of Russia and Dominik Hasek of the Czech Republic) to enter in the NHL, because the democratic governments in the newly formed nations did not restrict the movements of players. Ice hockey is not just a North American Sport. In the early 1900s, leagues were playing hockey in Britain and parts of Europe. In 1910, Britain won the first European Ice Hockey Championships.

The 1920 Olympics in Antwerp Belgium became the first to include an ice hockey competition. Canada won the first four Olympic gold medals in the sport. In 1930, the first ice hockey world championships were played. The championships are now played every year except when the Olympics are held.

After World War II the Soviet Union became a force to reckon with on the ice. The Soviets won Olympic ice hockey gold in 1956, just a decade the game after the game became an organized sport in their country. After that the Russians won the gold Olympic medals in 1964, 1968, 1972, 1976, 1988 and 1992.

The first recorded women`s hockey game was played in 1889 in Ottawa. Women`s hockey leagues thrived in Canada through the 1930s. After World War II, interest in the women`s game declined until the 1960s. In the 1980s, women`s hockey experienced a growth spurt.

The first women`s world championships were played in 1990. The National Collegiate Athletic Association added women`s hockey as a sanctioned sport in 1993 and women`s ice hockey made its Olympic debut in 1998. The US team won the first gold medal.

Notes:

· to scramble - продираться

· meadowland — луговое угодье

· to swat – бить

· pro – сокр. от professional

· finish - отделка

· streak — (зд.) ряд

· break-up - распад

· spurt – рывок