HOCKEY

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Try your hand (including adults) at shooting a hockey puck into a goal! Visit the Savannah Ghost Pirates as they share their love of hockey!

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The Savannah Ghost Pirates are a professional minor league ice hockey team in the ECHL, based in Savannah, Georgia. The team began play in the 2022–23 ECHL season with home games at the Enmarket Arena.

 

The origins of hockey are often debated. It is likely that hockey developed from stick-and-ball games played in the British Isles, particularly hurling (Ireland), shinty (Scotland) and bandy (England). These games shared a very similar basic structure and have been documented from the 14th century. Hurling was an ancient Irish stick-and-ball game that was originally played on the ground and resembled modern field hockey (it later evolved into the aerial game played today). In Scotland, people played a similar game called shinty (variations include shinny, schynnie and chamiare). In England, yet another similar game was called “bandy” or “bandie-ball.” The name is believed to have developed either from the verb “to bandy” (to strike back and forth) or from the bent stick used in the game. The term “bandy” was in use at least by 1610–11, when William Strachey, the first secretary of the Colony of Virginia, described a similar game played by the Powhatan Indian tribe.

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The bent or curved sticks used in bandy are similar to those used in early versions of cricket and golf. This has contributed to further confusion and debate among hockey historians. Many paintings by Dutch or Flemish artists in the early modern period depict the game of “kolf” (an early version of golf) played on ice with skates and using bent sticks. The most famous is The Hunters in the Snow (1565) by Pieter Bruegel. Some people have mistaken the games depicted in these paintings for early versions of ice hockey, but it is unlikely that any of them depicted a team sport.