Fighting in ice hockey

Fighting in ice hockey is an established tradition of the sport in North America, with a long history involving many levels of amateur and professional play and including some notable individual fights.

Fighting is usually performed by enforcers, or "goons"—players whose role it is to fight and intimidate—on a given team and is governed by a complex system of unwritten rules that players, coaches, officials, and the media refer to as "the code". Some fights are spontaneous, while others are premeditated by the participants. While officials tolerate fighting during hockey games, they impose a variety of penalties on players who engage in fights.

Unique among North American professional team sports, the National Hockey League (NHL) and most minor professional leagues in North America do not eject players outright for fighting but major European and collegiate hockey leagues do, and multi-game suspensions may be added on top of the ejection. Therefore, the vast majority of fights occur in the NHL and other North American professional leagues.

Ice hockey

Ice hockey is a contact team sport played on ice, usually in a rink, in which two teams of skaters use their sticks to shoot a vulcanized rubber puck into their opponent's net to score points. Ice hockey teams usually consist of four lines of three forwards, three pairs of defencemen, and two goaltenders. Normally, each team has five players who skate up and down the ice trying to take the puck and score a goal against the opposing team.

A fast-paced, physical sport, hockey is most popular in areas of North America (particularly Canada and the northern United States) and northern and western Europe. In North America, the National Hockey League (NHL) is the highest level for men's hockey and the most popular. The Kontinental Hockey League (KHL) is the highest league in Russia and much of Eastern Europe. Ice hockey is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) is the formal governing body for international ice hockey. The IIHF manages international tournaments and maintains the IIHF World Ranking. Worldwide, there are ice hockey federations in 74 countries.

NHL Hockey

NHL Hockey (titled EA Hockey outside North America) is an ice hockey game by EA Sports. Released in 1991 for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis, it is the first game in the NHL series.

Features

The first version of the game was released in August 1991 in North America for the Sega Genesis. It was developed by Park Place Productions, North America's largest independent development company owned by Michael Knox and Troy Lyndon. This version of NHL Hockey is the first game to include the EA Sports logo. It is considered the most realistic hockey game of its time. The game uses a vertical top-down view, which was unique at the time since most previous hockey games used a horizontal or side-on view. It also features a National Hockey League license, so all of the league's team names and logos are used. However, lack of a license from the National Hockey League Players' Association NHLPA results in all players being referred to by their numbers rather than names. Although the game has all of the NHL teams that existed at the time, the only competition present in the game is the Playoffs, decided in either one or seven matches.

Hockey

Hockey is a family of sports in which two teams play against each other by trying to maneuver a ball or a puck into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. In many areas, one sport (typically field hockey or ice hockey) is generally referred to simply as hockey.

Etymology

The first recorded use of the word hockey is in the 1773 book Juvenile Sports and Pastimes, to Which Are Prefixed, Memoirs of the Author: Including a New Mode of Infant Education by Richard Johnson (Pseud. Master Michel Angelo), whose chapter XI was titled "New Improvements on the Game of Hockey". The belief that hockey was mentioned in a 1363 proclamation by King Edward III of England is based on modern translations of the proclamation, which was originally in Latin and explicitly forbade the games "Pilam Manualem, Pedivam, & Bacularem: & ad Canibucam & Gallorum Pugnam". The English historian and biographer John Strype did not use the word "hockey" when he translated the proclamation in 1720.

The word hockey itself is of unknown origin. One explanation is that it is a derivative of hoquet, a Middle French word for a shepherd's stave. The curved, or "hooked" ends of the sticks used for hockey would indeed have resembled these staves. Another explanation is that the cork bungs that replaced wooden balls in the 18th century came from barrels containing "hock" ale, also called "hocky".

Top Five

Top Five is a 2014 American comedy film written and directed by Chris Rock. The film, which stars Rock, Rosario Dawson, and Gabrielle Union, was screened in the Special Presentations section of the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie follows New York City comedian and film star Andre Allen (Rock), who has to confront his past and comedic career while doing an interview with journalist Chelsea Brown (Dawson). The film was released on December 12, 2014, by Paramount Pictures.

Plot

New York Times reporter Chelsea Brown is spending a day interviewing comedian and recovering alcoholic Andre Allen, star of the hit film franchise Hammy The Bear, about a cop in a bear suit. He is attempting a foray into serious films with Uprize, in which he portrays Haitian Revolution figure Dutty Boukman, and sensitive to criticism, particularly by Times critic James Nielson, whose previous reviews of Andre's work have been negative and insulting. As the interview begins in his limousine, Andre recalls his lowest point, when he was in Houston in 2003 and met Jazzy Dee, who supplied him with drugs, alcohol and women. Yet after Jazzy refused to pay the women, they contended they were raped, leading to Andre's arrest.