World Pond Hockey Championships
The World Pond Hockey Championships is an annual international competition that takes place outdoors, on a body of frozen water, playing the pond hockey variant of ice hockey. The event takes place in the small, rural village of Tobique Valley, Canada, on Roulston Lake.
2010 edition of the Championship.
The championship in New Brunswick in 2017.
The championship's outdoor rinks in New Brunswick.
Pond hockey is a form of ice hockey similar in its object and appearance to traditional ice hockey, but simplified and designed to be played on part of a natural frozen body of water. The rink is 50 to 80 percent the size of a standard NHL-specification rink, and has no boards or glass surrounding it; usually only a barrier of snow keeps the puck in play. In addition, because there are no protective barriers behind the goal to contain high errant shots, the top of the goal is lower, in fact only slightly taller than the width of a puck, and the game does not have a formal goalie. Because of these differences, pond hockey places more emphasis on skating and puckhandling ability and less on shooting and checking. Non-competitive pond hockey is played with improvised goals, rinks of a variety of sizes, and no boards or snow barriers. There can only be 4 players playing per team at a time but have many subs to sub in.
A small pond hockey field
Children playing pond hockey, 1890s
Pond hockey played on the Lake Nokomis in Minnesota, USA in January 2009.
Players in the women's final at the 2020 US Pond Hockey Championships