This is hockey, pure
and simple. All the basic rules are the same (as well as the tendency
towards roughing it up) and let's face it, you can't change the ice.
The only difference is how you get around on it. In Sweden and Canada,
countries that have been playing hockey this way for years, they call
them "sledges". Americans, however, seem to always want to change things
to make them their own, so here we call them "sleds". I wonder if anyone
thought of the fact that we already have sleds, and they go under kids,
down steep hills, on Snow Days. Oh, well...
Sled hockey is played
mainly by people with various lower extremity disabilities (e.g. people
amputations, spinal cord injuries, cerebral palsy, post polio, etc.)
You use your arms to propel yourself by digging the picks, on the ends
of two short hockey sticks, into the ice and pulling yourself forward.
You have a right and a left stick (the blades are curved differently)
that are miniature copies of a typical hockey stick, except for the
metal picks (like figure skate toe picks) on the ends. You shoot, pass,
and propel yourself with them.
Sled hockey was introduced for the first
time in the 1994 Paralympics Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway. Countries
such as Norway, Sweden, Japan, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, United Arab
Emeris, Great Britain and the United States represented their nations
to determine the Paralympics gold, silver, and bronze medallists in 1998
in Nagano, Japan.
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