15 Variations of hockey

Air hockey is a game where two players play against each other on a low-friction table. Air hockey requires an air-hockey table, two player-held strikers, and a puck.

Ball hockey is a team sport and a variation of the sport of ice hockey and a specific variation of the game of street hockey. Ball Hockey is the same sport as Floor Hockey.

Bandy is a team winter sport played on ice, in which skaters use sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal.

Field hockey is a widely played team sport of the hockey family. The game can be played on grass, watered turf, artificial turf or synthetic field, as well as an indoor boarded surface. Each team plays with ten field players and a goalkeeper. Players use sticks made of wood, carbon fibre, fibre glass, or a combination of carbon fibre and fibre glass in different quantities, to hit a round, hard, plastic hockey ball. The length of the hockey stick is based on the player's individual height: the top of the stick usually comes to the players hip, and taller players typically have longer sticks. The sticks have a round side and a flat side, and only the flat face of the stick is allowed to be used. Use of the other side results in a foul. Goalies often have a different design of stick, although they can also use an ordinary field hockey stick. The specific goal-keeping sticks have another curve at the end of the stick, which is to give it more surface area to block the ball. The uniform consists of shin guards, shoes, shorts or a skirt, a mouthguard and a jersey.

Floorball is a type of floor hockey with five players and a goalkeeper in each team. Men and women play indoors with 96–115.5 cm-long (37.8–45.5 in) sticks and a 70–72 mm-circumference (2.76–2.83 in) plastic ball with holes. Matches are played in three twenty-minute periods. Floorball was included in the World Games for the first time in 2017 in Wrocław, Poland. Sweden were the first World Games gold medal winners.

Ice hockey is a contact team sport played on ice, usually in an indoor or outdoor rink, in which two teams of skaters use their sticks to shoot a vulcanized rubber puck into their opponent's net to score goals. The sport is known to be fast-paced and physical, with teams usually fielding six players at a time: one goaltender to stop the puck from going into their own net, two defensemen, and three forwards who skate the span of the ice trying to control the puck and score goals against the opposing team.

Roller inline hockey, or inline hockey is a variant of hockey played on a hard, smooth surface, with players using inline skates to move and hockey sticks to shoot a hard, plastic puck into their opponent's goal to score points. There are five players including the goalkeeper from each team on the rink at a time, while teams normally consist of 16 players.

Table hockey is a sport played on table hockey games. The International Table Hockey Federation (ITHF) uses only table hockeys made by Stiga. The origin of the sport was the Swedish Championship 1982 in Upplands Väsby. Organized table hockey is played in northern, central and eastern Europe, in North America, but table hockey is also played in South America, Africa, Australia, and Asia.

Rink bandy and rinkball are variants of bandy played on significantly smaller ice rinks. While a bandy rink is about the same size as a football pitch, rink bandy is played on ice hockey rinks.

Roller hockey, rink hockey or quad hockey is a team sport played on roller skates. Two five-man teams try to drive the ball with their sticks into the opponents' goal. The ball can only be put in motion by a stick, not the skate, otherwise a foul will be stated. The game has two 25-minute halves, with 15-minute halftime intermission, plus up to two 5-minute golden goal periods to settle ties with the clock stopping when the ball becomes dead. If the tie persists, a penalty shootout will determine the winner.

Street hockey is a variation of the sport of ice hockey where the game is played outdoors on foot, or with inline or roller skates using a ball or puck. Both ball and puck are typically designed to be played on non-ice surfaces. The object of the game is to score more goals than the opposing team by shooting the ball or puck into the opposing team's net. Street hockey in pickup form is generally played under the following guidelines since there are no "official rules" for local pickup hockey:Physical contact between players is extremely limited to avoid injury. Minimal or no hockey equipment is worn by the runners, depending on players' preferences. Players agree whether or not to allow slap shots and raising of the stick, both of which can incur serious injury to players, as there is minimal or no equipment worn. Players determine whether to use a hockey ball, a tennis ball, or a street hockey puck. There is no referee except when agreed upon by both teams.

A table hockey game, also called rod hockey game, stick hockey, bubble hockey, and board hockey, is a game for two players, derived from ice hockey. The game consists of a representation of a hockey rink; the players score goals by hitting a small puck into the opposing "net" with cutout figures that represent hockey players. The figures are manipulated by rods below the "ice": each one slides forward and back along its own narrow slot when the player pushes or pulls on the rod, or rotates to shoot or stickhandle the puck when the player spins the rod. Though similar in concept to air hockey, table hockey games are more of a simulation of the sport of ice hockey while air hockey is more abstract.

Underwater hockey (UWH), also known as Octopush is a globally played limited-contact sport in which two teams compete to manoeuvre a puck across the bottom of a swimming pool into the opposing team's goal by propelling it with a hockey stick or pusher). A key challenge of the game is that players are not able to use breathing devices such as scuba gear whilst playing, they must hold their breath. The game originated in England in 1954 when Alan Blake, a founder of the newly formed Southsea Sub-Aqua Club, invented the game he called Octopush as a means of keeping the club's members interested and active over the cold winter months when open-water diving lost its appeal. Underwater hockey is now played worldwide, with the Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques, abbreviated CMAS, as the world governing body. The first Underwater Hockey World Championship was held in Canada in 1980 after a false start in 1979 brought about by international politics and apartheid.

Unicycle hockey is a team sport, similar to rink hockey where players try to hit the ball with their sticks into the other team's goal, except that each player must be mounted on a unicycle to play the ball. A team is composed of five players, but there is no dedicated goalkeeper role.