Worked example
A parent overhears their kid say: "the coach gave us a bag skate because we were chirping too much, but I scored top cheese off a nice sauce from my winger, so we had a celly." Translation: a skating punishment, a shot high in the net off a lifted pass, and a well-earned celebration.
The locker room has its own vocabulary, passed down from one generation of players to the next and rarely explained to newcomers. Some terms cross decades almost unchanged, others shift meaning by region or level; all of them belong to the sport's culture just as much as its official rules. A parent who picks up even a handful of them stops feeling like an outsider at drop-off and pickup.
The bag skate is the richest example: an intense skating drill a coach uses as punishment, or simply to grab the team's attention when effort is lacking. The term's origin stays unconfirmed, with the most common theory holding that players arrive at the rink to find the pucks still in the bag, a sign the practice will be skating only. The movie Miracle popularized the nickname "Herbies", after coach Herb Brooks, who ordered one following a disappointing performance.
Chirping and shinny belong to the social side of the locker room. Chirping is friendly trash talk traded between teammates or opponents, on the bench or on the ice, a tradition as old as the sport itself. Shinny is an informal pickup game with no referee or structure, often played on a frozen pond or an outdoor rink, where many players first fall in love with the game.
The game itself carries its own vocabulary, from the driveway all the way to the NHL: the puck becomes a biscuit, the stick a twig, an assist an apple, a shot tucked high in the net a top cheese goal. These words show up as much in a youth hockey rink's stands as in professional broadcasts, which makes this vocabulary useful well beyond a kid's own locker room.
Understanding these words helps a parent follow a post-practice conversation without feeling lost, and sometimes even decode what a coach just told the team. RinkLog deliberately keeps its own vocabulary on the official side (shift, shot, hit, covered in the hockey glossary), but both languages coexist just fine in the real life of a locker room.
This vocabulary never sits still: every generation of players keeps some words, invents others, and a single team can end up with its own expressions that even teammates' parents have not caught up on yet. The simplest move is usually the best one: ask the kid to explain the term in their own words, which quickly becomes one of the best conversation starters on the ride home.
- Bag skate: an intense skating drill coaches use as punishment or to grab the team's attention; example: "the coach called a bag skate after that flat period."
- Herbies: another name for the bag skate, after coach Herb Brooks in the movie Miracle
- Chirping: friendly trash talk traded between teammates or opponents
- Shinny: an informal pickup game with no referee or structure, often on a pond or an outdoor rink
- Biscuit: the puck, in casual hockey slang
- Twig: the stick; an old-school term from when sticks were wood
- Apple: an assist, the pass that sets up a goal; a player with three assists has "three apples"
- Sauce (saucer pass): a pass that floats slightly off the ice to clear an opposing stick
- Celly: the celebration after a goal, from a quiet fist pump to a full production
- Top cheese (top shelf): a shot that lands high in the net, right under the crossbar
- Five-hole: the gap between a goalie's pads, a classic scoring target
- Sniper: a player known for an accurate, opportunistic shot
- Dangles: flashy puck handling that beats a defender one-on-one
- Tape to tape: a perfect pass, received right on the blade with no adjustment needed
- Pylon: a player who is easy to skate around, planted like a traffic cone
Frequently asked questions
What is a bag skate, exactly?
An intense skating drill, often line-to-line sprints, that a coach uses as punishment or to reset the team's energy. Increasingly questioned, because skating technique breaks down after 10 to 15 seconds of repeated sprinting.
Is chirping a form of bullying?
No, in its common use it is friendly teasing between teammates or opponents, a tradition that has always been part of locker room culture. It only becomes a problem when the tone crosses from teasing into something mean or personal.
Why is the bag skate falling out of favor?
Because skating technique degrades past 10 to 15 seconds of sprinting, and repeating it in that state ingrains bad habits rather than fixing anything. It stays more common at the school or college level than in youth or elite hockey today.
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