Hockey puck
The Oxford English Dictionary suggests the name is related to the verb to puck (a cognate of poke) used in the games of shinty and hurling for striking or pushing the ball, from the Scottish Gaelic puc or the Irish poc, meaning "to poke, punch or deliver a blow":[2][3] It is possible that settlers of Nova Scotia, many of whom were Scottish and Irish who played shinty and hurling, may have introduced the word to Canada.
The sport of bandy, prior to its first official organization in Britain, had its informal variants spread to North America where they and game concepts from lacrosse, shinty and hurling served as precursors in some format to ice hockey.
Records from the first indoor ice hockey game (1875) used a wooden puck, to prevent it from leaving the area of play[8] though new evidence has shown that cuts from large corks have also been used.
This invention incorporated coloured retro reflective materials of either embedded lens elements or prismatic reflectors laminated into recesses on the flat surfaces and the vertical edge of a standard hockey puck.
A short demonstration tape of the Minnesota North Stars skating with the Firepuck was shown during the period break at the 1993 NHL All-Star Game in Montreal.
The International Hockey League (IHL) pursued testing the Firepuck with its inventor, Donald Klassen.
The FoxTrax "smart puck" was developed by the Fox television network when it held National Hockey League (NHL) broadcasting rights for the United States.
This was an experiment in broadcasting intended to help viewers unfamiliar with hockey to better follow the game by making the puck more visible.
[12] Zdeno Chára, whose slapshot clocked 108.8 miles per hour (175.1 km/h) in the 2013 NHL All-Star Game SuperSkills competition, broke his own earlier record.
The most notable incident involving a spectator took place on March 18, 2002, when a 13-year-old girl, Brittanie Cecil, died two days after being struck on the head by a hockey puck deflected into the crowd at an NHL game between the Calgary Flames and Columbus Blue Jackets in Columbus.
[15] This mixture is then turned in a machine with metal rollers, where workers add extra natural rubber, and ensure that the mixing is even.
They have small ribs protruding from their tops and bottoms which limit contact with the surface, allowing better sliding motion and less friction.
These pucks typically come in light, easily visible colors: mostly commonly red, but also sometimes orange, yellow, pink, or green.
While there are numerous regional variations in colour, construction and materials all must conform to international regulations stipulating overall dimensions and weight.
"sponge hockey", is an organized recreational cult game that emerged in Canada around the 1950s and is played in the Canadian city of Winnipeg.
The game is a variant of ice hockey and was influenced by Canadian road-hockey and ice-hockey players playing shinny on outdoor rinks in running shoes and winter boots.
The game is played in winter strictly on outdoor rinks, does not use ice skates, and has codes involving less contact.
Ice hockey pucks of regulation 3-inch (7.6 cm) diameter and 1-inch (2.5 cm) thickness may be used as mechanical vibration dampening isolators in places such as feet for light industrial air compressors, and air conditioning units because they are of regulation materials and therefore consistent manufacture, size, and shape, and are constructed of a repeatable and consistent vulcanized rubber material.
A very common use of a slotted hockey puck is as an adaptor between the metal foot of a trolley jack and the sill (rocker panel) of an automobile.
The sill has a spot-welded lip which fits into the slot of the puck and would otherwise be bent or marked by the metal foot.
In November 2018, faculty of Oakland University in Michigan received hockey pucks and training to throw them as a possible last-ditch defense against active shooters.
