Roller hockey in the context of "Roller skates"

Hockey is a family of stick sports where two opposing teams use hockey sticks to propel a ball or disk into a goal. There are many types of hockey, and the individual sports vary in rules, numbers of players, apparel, and playing surface. Hockey includes both summer and winter variations that may be played on an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or an indoor gymnasium. Some forms of hockey require skates, either inline, roller or ice, while others do not. The various games are usually distinguished by proceeding the word hockey with a qualifier, as in field hockey, ice hockey, roller hockey, rink hockey, or floor hockey.In each of these sports, two teams play against each other by trying to manoeuvre the object of play, either a type of ball or a disk (such as a puck), into the opponent's goal using a hockey stick. Two notable exceptions use a straight stick and an open disk (still referred to as a puck) with a hole in the center instead. The first case is a style of floor hockey whose rules were codified in 1936 during the Great Depression by Canada's Sam Jacks. The second case involves a variant which was later modified in roughly the 1970s to make a related game that would be considered suitable for inclusion as a team sport in the newly emerging Special Olympics. The floor game of gym ringette, though related to floor hockey, is not a true variant because it was designed in the 1990s and modelled on the Canadian ice skating team sport of ringette, which was invented in Canada in 1963. Ringette was also invented by Sam Jacks, the same Canadian who codified the rules for the open disk style of floor hockey in 1936.Certain sports which share general characteristics with the forms of hockey, but are not generally referred to as hockey include lacrosse, hurling, camogie, and shinty.

A hockey puck is either an open or closed disk used in a variety of sports and games. There are designs made for use on an ice surface, such as in ice hockey, and others for the different variants of floor hockey which includes the wheeled skate variant of inline hockey (a.k.a. roller hockey). They are all designed to serve the same function a ball does in ball games.

A closed disk hockey puck having the shape of a short cylinder made of vulcanized rubber is used in the sport of ice hockey. Hockey pucks are designed for use on either an ice surface, dry floor, or underwater, though open disk designs have only been used on floors.

Floor hockey is a broad term for several indoor floor game codes which involve two teams using a stick and type of ball or puck. Pucks are either open or closed. These games are played either on foot or with wheeled skates. Variants typically reflect the style of ice hockey, field hockey, bandy or some other combination of sport. Games are commonly known by various names including cosom hockey, ball hockey, floorball, or simply floor hockey.

Two floor hockey variants involve the use of wheeled skates and are categorized as roller sports under the title of roller hockey. Quad hockey uses quad skates, commonly known as roller skates, and appears similar to bandy, while inline hockey uses inline skates and is of the ice hockey variation.

In many team sports that involve scoring goals, the goalkeeper (sometimes termed goaltender, netminder, GK, goalie, or keeper) is a designated player charged with directly preventing the opposing team from scoring by blocking or intercepting opposing shots on goal. Such positions exist in bandy, rink bandy, camogie, association football, Gaelic football, international rules football, floorball, handball, hurling, field hockey, ice hockey, roller hockey, lacrosse, ringette, rinkball, water polo, and shinty, as well as in other sports.

In most sports that involve scoring in a net, rules apply to the goalkeeper that do not apply to other players. These rules are often instituted to protect the goalkeeper from being a target for dangerous or even violent actions. This is most apparent in sports such as ice hockey and lacrosse, where goalkeepers are required to wear special equipment like heavy pads and a face mask to protect their bodies from the impact of the playing object (e.g., a ball or puck).