Ice hockey, known 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, the United States, Soviet Union/Russia, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Belarus, Ukraine, and Switzerland. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, and it has a comparably strong following in certain regions of the United States, notably the Northeast, the Northern Midwest, and Alaska.
In all, there are 64 members in the International Ice Hockey Federation. As one might expect, its worldwide popularity is concentrated primarily in locales cool enough for natural, long-term seasonal ice cover.
While most of the countries mentioned above have their own professional ice hockey league, North America's National Hockey League is considered the world's premier professional ice hockey league and attracts almost all of the world's elite players.
