So you’ve seen Vegas Golden Knights jerseys around town and heard people talking about the Stanley Cup. You want to get into hockey, but you really don’t know the sport … and at this point, you’re too embarrassed to ask for help.

Hockey can be a little intimidating for newcomers. Let’s break it down and make a true hockey fan of you.

How to play

Hockey’s a fairly simple game: Use a stick to move the puck around the ice and into the goal. There are rules, of course, but following a hockey game is easy once you understand two basic concepts: what the lines on the ice mean, and what you can and cannot do with your stick.

The blue lines break up the ice—into two attacking zones and one neutral zone. Offensive players cannot enter the attacking zone before the puck does. If they do it’s offside, one of the most common reasons play gets stopped.

Players can pass and shoot with their sticks, and can only shoot with their sticks. If one tries to hinder an opponent with the stick, that’s a penalty. Goals only count if they come off a player’s stick, or bounce inadvertently off a player into the goal. One cannot intentionally kick, push, punch, head-butt or otherwise use the body to put the puck into the net.

NHL History

The sport itself goes back hundreds of years, but hockey as we know it today rounded into shape with the formation of the National Hockey League in 1917. (The Golden Knights’ inaugural season was part of the league’s centennial celebration.)

The NHL had some growing pains, but it became the league with which we’re familiar in the 1940s with six teams: the Toronto Maple Leafs, Montreal Canadiens, Boston Bruins, New York Rangers, Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings. You’ll often hear these teams referred to as the “Original Six.”

The league added six more teams in 1967 and has expanded many times since. The Golden Knights became the league’s 31st team in 2017, and the Seattle Kraken, which begins play next year, will be the 32nd.

Everyone plays for the Stanley Cup, the most revered trophy in hockey and arguably all of sports. It’s close to 150 years old and went through phases as the trophy of multiple leagues, but has been exclusively awarded to the NHL champion since 1926. Hockey’s postseason is the Stanley Cup Playoffs, and the final two teams meet in the Stanley Cup Final.

The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup the most times—24. The Tampa Bay Lightning won last season’s Cup.

Key terms and rules

Power play. When a team has more players on the ice due to a penalty by the opposition.

Penalty kill. When a team has fewer players on the ice due to a penalty.

Penalty box. When players commit penalties, they sit in the box for either two, four or five minutes depending on the severity of the infraction. Their team plays with fewer players than their opponent during that time.

High-sticking.Players cannot play the puck when it’s in the air above their shoulders, knock a puck into the goal when it’s above the height of the net’s crossbar or make contact with another player’s face or helmet with the stick. The latter is a penalty of varying length depending on the severity.

Tripping/Holding/Elbowing. Fairly self-explanatory. All penalties.

Icing. A player cannot shoot or pass the puck and have it cross the center-ice line and the goal line. That’s icing, for which play is stopped and the ensuing faceoff goes back into the offending team’s defensive zone.

Hockey in Vegas

The Vegas Golden Knights are the Valley’s first major-league hockey team, but they were actually preceded here by two other professional teams. The Las Vegas Thunder of the International Hockey League (IHL) played at the Thomas & Mack Center from 1993 to 1999, and the Las Vegas Wranglers of the East Coast Hockey League (ECHL) played at Orleans Arena from 2003 to 2014.

Las Vegas was awarded an NHL franchise in 2016, and the Golden Knights played their first regular season home game at the newly built T-Mobile Arena on the Strip on October 10, 2017, against Arizona. The first year couldn’t have gone much better: Vegas won both the Pacific Division and Western Conference and advanced to the Stanley Cup Final before falling to the Washington Capitals.

The Knights have won two Pacific Division titles in their three years and have reached the conference final twice. They have yet to return to the Stanley Cup Final, but they are considered one of the better teams in the league this season and are expected to compete for the Cup.

Though the Thunder and Wranglers are gone, their influence remains. Shortly after the Thunder folded, the IHL was enveloped by the American Hockey League (AHL). Almost a year ago, the Golden Knights’ organization announced it had purchased an AHL team with the intent to move it to the Valley, and the Henderson Silver Knights were born. The Silver Knights will be the Golden Knights’ minor-league affiliate and begin play this February at Orleans Arena. The Silver Knights practice and are headquartered at Lifeguard Arena on Water Street in Henderson, and their permanent home, the Henderson Event Center, is currently under construction at the site of the old Henderson Pavilion.

How to tune in

Most Golden Knights games air on AT&T SportsNet in the Las Vegas market. That’s channel 1313 on Cox Cable, 684 on DirecTV and 1760 on CenturyLink. Occasionally the team’s games air nationally on NBC Sports Network, and a February 20 outdoor game against the Avalanche at Lake Tahoe will air on NBC.

As for radio, nearly every 2021 game will air on Fox Sports 1340-AM and 98.9-FM.

Because of NHL blackout rules, the NHL Center Ice package or NHL.TV will not carry Golden Knights games in the Vegas market. You need a cable subscription.

Can we go to games

Not yet. State-mandated COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings have shut the doors on T-Mobile Arena for VGK games. The hope is for fans to be allowed into games later this season, but nothing is certain.

The Golden Knights have sold out every home game in their history and have a season-ticket waiting list that’s years long. Individual-game tickets aren’t that hard to come by, however … if you’re willing to pay. They appear often on secondary markets with a hefty price tag, sometimes clearing $200 apiece, but they are readily obtainable for most games.