| Olympic Ice Hockey News: |
| Ice hockey, often referred to simply as hockey in Canada and the USA, is a team sport played on ice. Ice hockey is most popular as a sport in areas that are sufficiently cold for natural, reliable seasonal ice cover. It is one of the four major North American professional sports, represented by the National Hockey League (NHL) at the highest level. It is the official national winter sport of Canada, where the game enjoys immense popularity, and is also the most popular spectator sport in Finland. Only six of the thirty NHL franchises are based in Canada, but Canadians outnumber Americans in the league by a ratio of almost four to one. About thirty percent of the league's players are non-North American.
The sport's popularity in the U.S. is concentrated in certain regions, notably the Northeast, the Upper Midwest, and Alaska. This concentration helps to make ice hockey the least watched major sport in the United States, though it is by far the most watched sport in Canada. Nonetheless, in certain major U.S. cities (notably Buffalo, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis, Chicago, Boston, New York City, Philadelphia, and Denver) it commands popularity levels similar to and occasionally exceeding basketball for winter sports fans. |
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