Ice hockey, referred to simply as hockey in Canada and the United States, is a team sport played on ice. It is one of the world's fastest sports, with players on skates capable of going high speeds on natural or artificial ice surfaces. The most prominent ice hockey nations are Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Slovakia, Sweden and the United States. While there are 64 total members of the International Ice Hockey Federation, those seven nations have dominated ice hockey. Of the sixty medals awarded in men's competition at the Olympic level from 1920 on, only six did not go to one of those countries (or a former entity thereof, such as Czechoslovakia or the Soviet Union) and only one such medal was awarded above bronze. [1]

Ice hockey is most popular as a sport in areas that are suffciently cold for natural, reliable seasonal ice cover. It is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented by the National Hockey League (NHL) at the highest level. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity. Six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadians currently outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost three to one, and about thirty percent of the league's players are non-North Americans. The sport's popularily in the US is centralized in certain regions, notably the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and Alaska.