Do you have a passion for ice hockey? Do you love watching the world’s best get involved in epic hockey matches? Do you enjoy pucks, the little plastic baseballs that bounce around the ice during a game, getting in the way of beautiful blade work?
The NHL is one of the greatest hockey leagues in the world, with tons of action night in, night out. The games can be fun to watch, but they can also be pretty intense. One of the hardest tasks when following a hockey game is keeping up with all the stats and information that the sports journalists try to cram into your head. There’s a lot of data out there and lots of it is pretty technical, so unless you’re a hockey stats junkie, it can be hard to know what exactly is the weight of an nhl hockey puck.
Luckily, we’ve got you covered. Here’s the answer to the question, “What is the weight of an nhl hockey puck?” Along with the stats, we’ll also cover some interesting facts about these magnificent little spheres.
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What Is The Weight Of An Nhl Hockey Puck?
The official weight of a hockey puck is 3.52 ounces. That’s it! The NHL adopted the international standard for measuring hockey balls in 1924, so there’s been no other standard-bearers since. The NHL also adopted the metric system in 1925, so the 3.52 ounce figure is now official in both metric and imperial measurements.
According to the NHL, a 3.52 ounce puck will travel at approximately 88 miles per hour (142 km per hour), which is very fast. This puts it in the same category as a football and a basketball. If you’ve seen a hockey puck float in the air, it’s because it originally had extra weight on it. Professional hockey players usually have a shooting magnet attached to their waist, so they can shoot the puck into the net with greater accuracy. The extra weight also improves the puck’s movement on the ice, allowing for greater spin and velocity. The shooting magnet isn’t just for show either, as it attracts iron objects like nails and screws onto the ice, which can be collected for use in the shop.
Why Are Pucks Light?
It’s no secret that the weight of a puck drastically reduces its aerodynamic performance. That’s really all there is to it. To give you some context, here are the weight-equivalent figures for other popular sports:
- Basketball: 2.2 ounces
- Baseball: 1.8 ounces
- Soccer: 1.4 ounces
- Golf: 0.9 ounces
- Tennis: 0.7 ounces
The more you put on a ball, the more it weighs. And the more it weighs, the less air the ball can slice through, the faster it’ll go, the more difficult it’ll be for the pitcher to control, etc. You get the idea.
How Long Does It Take For A Puck To Travel The Thinnest Possible Path?
This one is interesting because it gives you an idea of how aerodynamic a puck really is, when weighed down by nothing more than air. Let’s say you have a 3.52 ounce puck. You also have a window open above the ice, letting the hot air out of the building. In this scenario, the roof would be acting as the ground, so you’d essentially be creating a vacuum around the puck. That means there’s nothing more holding it up than the air, and based on the equation of weight equals pressure, the air would be working hard to keep the puck aloft. As you’d expect, the farther the puck travels, the harder it works to keep its position in the air. This is known as Pascal’s Law.
If we look at all the factors that weigh down a hockey puck – not just the air, but the ground, the temperature, the humidity, etc – we can calculate just how long it will take for the puck to reach the ground. Here’s the equation for that:
W = mu x C x V2 x K x e
W is the weight, mu is the gravitational constant (which is just 0.0000012285 for those of you keeping score at home), C is the coefficient of drag, V is the ball’s speed, K is its kinetic energy, and e is its efficiency. The answer is 17.6 feet (5.24 m), according to the NHL.
How Does The Size Of A Puck Impact Its Performance?
We already touched on this a bit when we talked about how the weight of a puck reduces its aerodynamic performance. Let’s put it this way: bigger is better when it comes to pucks. As the weight increases, so too does the drag. What’s more, according to the NHL, bigger is also better when it comes to the amount of energy a puck requires to travel a certain distance. To give you some context, here are the numbers for different size pucks: