Let's Talk About It

By Victoria Taylor

If you’re into Hockey then you probably know that the NHL has recently started back for the 2025-2026 season. That fact is, for the first time ever, relevant to this particular sports fan because I’ve decided that this is going to be the year that I get into hockey curtesy of free tickets to a local game that got me immediately hooked on the sport. The grace of the players skating contrasted by the violence of the game and the insane speeds they play at; anybody would fall victim.

My first step into the world of the NHL was to learn the basics of the game. If you’ve ever tried to watch a sports match from scratch you know how confusing they can be, I’ve found that things are a lot more fun if you know what’s happening.

Let me tell you what I’ve learnt so far. The first thing you need to learn when getting into Ice Hockey is the structure of the games, they happen in three twenty-minute sections but don’t let that fool you they can run for up to three hours between stoppages mid-section, breaks in-between and possible overtime play. Speaking of overtime, there are three different ways in which it’s played to ensure that a game doesn’t end in a tie. They begin by adding an extra five minutes to the clock which ends when one team scores a goal and wins the game, if neither team scores they move to a best of three penalty shoot-out and if they are still on equal points after that then it goes to a sudden death shot, the first team to get a goal in wins.

Other than the structure of the games I found it helpful to have some basic knowledge of the penalty systems and the different things the refs might call that cause stoppages in the game. There are a fairly wide variety of things that can get players sent to the penalty box so for the sake of simplicity I’m going to address how they work rather than listing every infraction. A player can be given a minor or a major penalty depending on how dangerous the referees view their action on the ice to have been; a minor penalty has the player in question sitting out for two minutes of gameplay while a major penalty caries a duration of five minutes. The time during which a player is off the ice is known as a ‘power play’ for whichever side isn’t down a man because they have a numbers advantage over the other team.

There were two main calls that I heard a lot throughout my first NHL game and found myself grateful to have learned about in advance of watching, those were ‘offside’ and ‘icing’. An Offside is called when a player crosses one of the dividing lines into a new section of the ice before the puck does, so long as they are not in control of the puck at the time. Icing is when a player in the defensive zone shoots the puck up the ice and past the opposing teams goal line without it being intercepted. When either of these calls are made the game is paused and there is another face off for possession.

While there’s a lot more for me to learn about how the sport works as I get into it this season those basics are enough to get the idea of what is happening while watching a game. So, with my newfound knowledge, I decided that it was time to actually try watching an NHL game… which was not as easy as I had been telling myself.

There are often times multiple games being played at the same time, so I had to decide which one I wanted to watch. I imagine for long-term fans of the league this is an easy decision as they watch whatever game their favourite team is playing in but I don’t have a favourite team yet. I do, however, have a shortlist of potential favourite teams that I am currently audition before making a final commitment. One of these teams are the Krakens who were playing at 2am EEST (the other option was a 5am game) so I found a streaming platform and set myself up for a late night of sports.

I was starting to get tired before the game even started but I was determined that I was going to give this a go, I had begun to fall in love with the game of Hockey during the few weeks beforehand and I really wanted to finally see a game at the highest level of the sport. I put the pre-match show on to keep myself awake and excited and was immediately smacked in the face with the difference in sporting culture that exists between American sports and European sports.

Let’s start off with the positives of the pre-match content; they interviewed both the Krakens new coach and a few of the players which was a really cool way to get more of a view of the team culture and their thoughts heading both into the match and the season as a whole, the music choices are brilliant for building up hype and the intro for the Krakens is insanely cool, the teams theming in general is really well done. The commentators on the show were very complimentary about the other team while still backing their guys which was nice to see but I imagine doesn’t always happen like in any sport.

Now for the less pleasant culture shock I experienced; in the span of about half an hour there were at least four commercial breaks which were a few minutes long each and cut into the middle of the build-up of energy pre-game. It was really hard to get into what was happening and what they were saying when they stopped what felt like every five minutes. I had heard of commercial breaks before going into watching a game but in no way did I expect them to have the level of prevalence that they do.

When the first period of the match itself began my immediate thought was “Holy Shit, that’s so fast” these players are moving up and down the ice at lightning quick speeds and it can be really hard to follow what’s going on when you begin watching because of it. The level of skill that the game takes to play was immediately obvious to me as was the reason it’s valued so far above any other international hockey league.

My next thought was how amazing it must be to watch the game in person, to feel the atmosphere, to see them close up, how the players move and their skates on the ice. It’s certainly been put on my bucket list to attend an NHL game at some point in my life and, fan of the game or not, I think it should be something that’s on everybody else’s as well.

Unfortunately for me the Montreal Canadians appear to be a good team and the first period was less than ideal for the Krakens with the Canadians scoring a goal within the first five minutes of the game. I did note, however, that the Kraken’s defence game seemed quite impressive, especially their goalie Joey Daccord who is currently sitting in seventh place regarding overall statistics for the 2025-2026 season. The majority of the ice time in the first period was spent in the Kraken’s defensive zone and there were several shots taken at and blocked by Daccord.

There was a break taken between playing the first and second period as is typical in Hockey games during which my exhaustion fully hit me as it was around 3am in the morning; existing European NHL fans I salute you because staying up for these games is not easy.

Maybe it was my state of tiredness, maybe it’s just being new to the sport but after the second period of the game started up I had entirely forgotten that the two teams had swapped sides of the ice and was consequently confused as to why the commentators were saying there had been an improvement in the Kraken’s game before I remembered. When I did realise it was shortly before the Krakens scored their first goal of the game which I celebrated appropriately sedately for the time of night, and which tied them up with the Canadians.

The tie up did not last for long as the Canadians scored a second goal on the Krakens during the first half of this period which was received very loudly and excitedly by the home crowd. I think that there must be something special in a home game over an away game with the roaring support of a crowd filled with fans of the team on familiar ice.

There were not any more goals made before that halfway point of the game was reached and they took yet another commercial break. I am slightly ashamed to tell you that this is about as far through the match as I made it; it was 3:30am, the team I was watching for looked set to lose the game and I had university the next day. While I am glad for the extra sleep I gained I must admit that when I saw the next morning that the game was tied up and went into overtime I was slightly regretful I did not stay up to watch it play out as it sounded like an exciting ending to the match up.

The parts of the game that I did manage to watch I found exciting and enjoyable enough that I have every intention to continue my endeavours of learning about Ice Hockey and becoming a fan of the NHL. In fact there is a game on Friday morning (EEET) between the Avs and the Blue Jackets which I will try my utmost to watch the entire way through as I ‘interview’ another team on my quest to find a favourite.

If you were thinking about getting into Ice Hockey, whether it be your local league or the NHL, then let this be your sign to give watching a game a go. I think you’ll find the sport just as compelling as I have thus far.