Ice Hockey

Updated: August 06, 2008

Have you every wondered where hockey came from? Well, the word hockey originates from "hocquet," meaning "stick" in French. People have been playing forms of the sport since the 1600s when sticks were used to bat around snowballs on ice.The first set of hockey rules for hockey as we know it didn't develop until 1879 in Montreal when a group of students at McGill University organized the first events.

Later, in 1920 it became an Olympic sport, but it took over a hundred years of building popularity across the globe to find its way to the Olympics. It wasn't until the early 1900s that people began to play the sport in Europe. Most knew of hockey on the field rather than the rinks traditionally reserved for curling, another Winter Game sport.

Now there are 12 men's Olympic hockey teams and eight women's. The players compete in a round robin tournament that decides the playoff teams who compete for medals.