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Hockey, typically associated with colder regions – such as Canada, the United States, Russia, Norway, Sweden, and Scandinavia – is a sport which is quite physically demanding on many players. Rotating 6 players at a time, the game has a total of 22 players. Overtime is similarly split into twenty minute periods, ending when there is a goal made. This applies if it’s a tied game at the last period and this is one way to break a tie to end a game as late ties are no longer allowed in the NHL.

Though his scoring records have been obliterated by Wayne Gretzky and Mario Lemieux, former Boston Bruins/New York Rangers center Phil Esposito is still regarded by hockey cognoscenti as one of the greatest offensive players in the history of the game. He is a member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, as is his brother Tony Esposito who was a standout goaltender for the Chicago Blackhawks.

‘The Golden Jet’ Bobby Hull was the most feared goal scorer of the 1960′s and 1970′s and arguably the greatest left wing to ever play professional hockey. Along with teammate Stan Mikita, Hull made the Chicago Blackhawks one of the NHLs true offensive powerhouses. He and Mikita were the first NHL players to use curved stick blades, which made his already wicked slapshot even more difficult to stop. This was a very significant development in pro hockey, and now its rare to find a player that plays with the flat stick blade that was once commonplace before Hull and Mikita’s revolutionary modification.

In the 1960′s, the NHL was almost entirely made up of Canadian born players. There were a few US natives, but players from other countries were unheard of. Stan Mikita, born the country formerly known as Czechoslovakia, started to change that. While he was sometimes overshadowed by teammates like Bobby Hull, most hockey experts consider Mikita the best NHL center of the 1960′s. He was born in what is now Slovakia, and sent to live in Canada as a young boy. Like most boys his age, he began playing the national sport of hockey.