Exhibition Game - Ice Hockey

Ice Hockey

Prior to the 1917-18 NHL season, an exhibition game was played on 15 December, between the Montreal Maroons and the Montreal Wanderers. The game was played as a benefit to aid victims of the Halifax explosion.

Under the 1995–2004 National Hockey League collective bargaining agreement, teams were limited to nine preseason games. From 1975 to 1991, NHL teams sometimes played exhibition games against teams from the Soviet Union in the Super Series, and in 1978, played against World Hockey Association teams also in preseason training. Like the NFL, the NHL sometimes schedules exhibition games for cities without their own NHL teams, often at a club's minor league affiliate (e.g. Carolina Hurricanes games at Time Warner Cable Arena in Charlotte, home of their AHL affiliate; Los Angeles Kings games at Citizens Business Bank Arena in Ontario, home of their ECHL affiliate; Montreal Canadiens games in Colisée Pepsi in Quebec City, which has no pro hockey but used to have an NHL team until 1995; various Western Canada teams at Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon, a potential NHL expansion venue). Since the 2000s, some preseason games have been played in Europe against European teams, as part of the NHL Challenge and NHL Premiere series. In addition to the standard preseason, there also exist prospect tournaments such as the Vancouver Canucks' YoungStars tournament and the Detroit Red Wings' training camp, in which NHL teams' younger prospects face off against each other under their parent club's banner.

In 1992, goaltender Manon Rhéaume played in a preseason game for the Tampa Bay Lightning, becoming the first woman to suit up for a male pro sports team in North America.

The Flying Fathers, a Canadian group of Catholic priests, regularly tour North America playing exhibition hockey games for charity. One of the organization's founders, Les Costello, was a onetime NHL player who was ordained as a priest after retiring from professional hockey. Another prominent exhibition hockey team is the Buffalo Sabres Alumni Hockey Team, which is composed almost entirely of retired NHL players, the majority of whom (as the name suggests) played at least a portion of their career for the Buffalo Sabres.

American college hockey teams occasionally play exhibition games against Canadian college teams as well as against USA or Canadian national teams. (In men's hockey, the senior national teams are selected from NHL and other pro players, and college teams would be overmatched against those teams even if they were allowed to play them. However, the national under-18 teams are made up of amateurs.)