TEAM DARK!!!!!

I'm gonna make more probably. Definitely.

on the ice (which is 200 feet long and 85 feet wide) at any given moment (aside from powerplays/penalty kills which i'll go into later) there are 12 players total, 6 on each team. one goalie, who's job is to stop the other team from scoring. goalies are usually weird and this is accepted as a fact. no goalie is normal. there are also 2 defenseman (dmen) who work as a pair (dpair) to help stop the other team from shooting on the goalie/goal. there are three forwards (a right wing, a center, and a left wing) who are trying to score on the other team. teams score by getting the puck (little rubber disk) in the net. there's also three refs on the ice. the five skaters (dmen and forwards) are sent out for 30-45 SECOND shifts. they are playing hockey so hard the shifts are half a minute. a minute is considered a long shift. they are moved in lines, so the same five people tend (TEND. they won't always. when coaches shuffle lines mid-game it's called musical lines and everyone hates it unless it works and we score then we love it) to be on the ice together. it also leads to really good friendships that lead to the many tens of hockey rpf works on ao3. there's a bunch of penalties like fighting and instagating (starting a fight) and tripping and hooking (using your stick to hook an opposing player) and highsticking (hitting someone in the face with your stick) and holding and icing (sending the puck across 2 red lines (lines extending from the goal to the edges of the rink) because when the NHL wasn't the NHL yet they wanted people to stop sprinting full speed at each other and getting hurt) and offsides (the team in possession of the puck crossing the blue line (line that denotes offensive vs neutral vs defensive zone) before the puck does) and delay of game (flicking the puck over the boards (plexiglass to protect fans)). some are minor penalties that get you 2 minutes sitting in the penalty box (think. timeout. they go sit in a box for the timespan and think about what they did.) or they're majors and then they sit for five minutes (like if a player made an opposing player bleed with a high stick). that brings us to penalty kills/powerplays. while one player is sitting in the box for their crimes, that team is down a player (to five including the goalie) even if the line the criminal player is on changes and is on the penalty kill. they are trying to kill the time on the penalty while the other team is on the powerplay, with an extra man (six men, counting the goalie) on the ice for the duration of the penalty. sometimes teams can have six skaters (players that arent goalies) on the ice at one time by pulling their goalie from the net and having what's called an empty net (incredible name i know we're all very literal over here). this is usually done in the last two minutes of a game that a team is very much losing and might be able to score A goal to make the loss a little better OR to tie a game. however every time a team pulls the goalie every fan ever is panicked because it is much easier to score on a goal that does not have a highly-specialied man in charge of stopping you from scoring in it. yeah. hockey is great. i love this sport so fucking much. that was a lot of words. feel free to ask questions if something doesnt make sense :)

my witch hat manga collection is (momentarily) complete!!!! (volume 13 hasn't come out here yet :P)