Penalty (ice hockey)

A penalty in ice hockey is a punishment for an infringement of the rules. Most penalties are enforced by sending the offending player to a penalty box for a set number of minutes. During the penalty the player may not participate in play. Penalties are called and enforced by the referee, or in some cases, the linesman. The offending team may not replace the player on the ice (although there are some exceptions, such as fighting), leaving them short-handed as opposed to full strength. When the opposing team is said to be on a power play, they will have one more player on the ice than the short-handed team. The short-handed team is said to be "on the penalty kill" until the penalty expires and the penalized player returns to play. While standards vary somewhat between leagues, most leagues recognize several common varieties of penalties, as well as common infractions.

The statistic used to track penalties is called "penalty minutes" and abbreviated to "PIM" (spoken as single word "pims"). PIM is an acronym for "penalties in minutes",^[1] though the full term is rarely used today. It represents the total assessed length of penalties each player or team has accrued.