Been to Washington’s Verizon Center yesterday to watch this season’s NHL. Well I’ve never been to an ice hockey match before but it was interesting! There were a lot of surprising facts that I learned from my roommate (who happens to be Canadian), oddly the local team Washington Capitals lost 1-6 to Anaheim Ducks. A packed 12000+ audience was disappointed 
in the 18F chilling temperature
Somethings you would want to know about ice hockey and NHL: -
-> two teams of just 6 (inc the goaltender) but a total of 14 (each team, on the bench) keep rotating for the 3 ‘periods’ of 20 min plays
-> more than 50% of NHL players are Canadians (yeah you guessed it, why)
-> Its considered the “Man to Man” Game in mainstream sports. If you ever watched an ice hockey match on TV you would have seen fights, rather unusual fights with kicking and throwing each other on the floor; Surprisingly hockey is the only sport which “allows” such acts compared to a touchMeNot NBA basketball matches. Heck what yesterday’s match there was a fight and even the referee let the players go at it for about 20 seconds (there was special music being played) and then the referee gets em off. The only reason why they do it is, they say – “It’s man’s game, deal with it” plus the fans enjoy the fights 
Of course the rules have changed over the last 2 years and fights are now reduced with heavy penalties (yeah, just 2 mins off the court is a penalty for kicking someone on the court)
You may have heard the old joke: “I was at a fight, and a hockey game broke out.”
-> The players smash a puck across the ice at 90 miles per hour.
-> More Eastern Europeans are joining now in NHL as they have more skill than Americans
-> Some of the best players are in the age range of 17-22.
->Professional hockey players with the NHL earn average salaries of $1.8 million a year. The NHL’s highest paid player, Jaromir Jagr earns $11 million a year. Of course some local players on low-level leagues earn as little as $500 a week