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The fastest of all team sports, ice has been described as a combination of "blood, sweat, and beauty." Stiffer penalties have not discouraged the players from using their basic equipment of sticks and skates as weapons, and this brutality has diminished the abstr ....

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.... that were curved at the lower end. The French word for the similarly shaped shepherd's crook, hoquet, was attached by French explorers who watched the Indians' ball-and-stick games. Although the original game called for nine men on each side, the number of team players involved could vary from one community to another. Soon a committee met in Montreal to establish regulations for seven-man teams. The positions agreed upon were goalkeeper, two defensemen, three forwards, and a rover who alternated between offense and defense. The National Association, formed in 1909, eliminated the rover, which meant that east-west championship games alternated b ....