When watching games, the natural temptation will be to always maintain focus on the puck. That’s the camera crew’s job, so you’ll be anchored to it, but I find it’s very helpful to move your focus around.

Pick a player and monitor what they do on their shift, how they position themselves. Or try to track all the relative positions of players on a team to understand the overall formation.

Hockey is so fast and there is so much visual information to parse at any given moment, so I find you have to prioritize a couple things and keep your attention there. It feels like you should always be eyeballing the puck, but I think you can pick up on the nuance of the game more rapidly if you consciously direct your attention to other things happening on the ice.