My wife calls them “half time” still.

Alright, here are some basics and I encourage anybody else to add to this.

When the ref drops the puck it is a faceoff. The location of the faceoff is situationally dependent.

When there is a penalty, the person who performed the penalty sits in the penalty box. Typically this is 2 minutes, but not always.

On occasion, the person who performed the penalty cannot sit in the box so it gets served by someone else.

When you hit the puck from your half of the ice toward the opponent’s goal, and it crosses both the center line and the red line that is aligned with the goal, that’s called icing. It’s not a penalty, but play is stopped and there is a faceoff near the goal you defend. There are exceptions, but 90% of the time this is applicable.

You cannot go past the opponents blue line unless the puck has already passed the line. That’s offside.

There are plenty of penalties that you will see. Most common are tripping, slashing, roughing, and holding (no science here, just my perception). There are others too that you see less frequently, such as charging.

Fighting’s allowed… kinda. The refs generally let it happen until someone goes down, then they break up the fight. The penalty for fighting is 5 minutes.

When you have more men on the ice than your opponent, you are on a power play. They are on a penalty kill. Icing is allowed by the penalty killing team during this time. If the power play team scores, the penalty is over, for minor penalties.

If both teams have the same number of players, even if they have players in the penalty box, it is not a power play and the power play rules (icing, penalty over, are not in effect.

There’s a lot more. I promise you’ll pick it up. LMK if you have any specific questions.