I haven't watched hockey for the joy of it since 1996... whenever the Carolina Panthers fans were throwing rats onto the ice. So I have no instincts for the sport... not the way I do for basketball and football.
And can I say... the game is a lot faster than I was expecting... sure I'd like the puck in the frame, but I was thinking I would be able to take some long (.5 second) shots and pan across the ice... and that really didn't happen... and the plastic glass they use... wow... that is so scuffed... and I was shooting close to the glass to blur the scuffs into the foreground, but when the light reflects off of it... geesh. I don't envy the task of doing this often.
I shot at f/2.8 on my 70-200 and I was happy enough with the shots... I could have zoomed in more... but I understand I didn't want to cut off heads.. and then f/1.2 with my 85L mkii... and the AF was faster than I was expecting... but even with the distance to the subject, the DOF wasn't that great... and everyone was wearing a mask... so EVEN if I focused on their face... it wouldn't have helped that much because I would have still be 3 inches away from their face/eyes... so I like the f/1.2 shots... enough that I don't mind the faces being blah...
Then I shot some long exposures using a monopod and they were ok... I was trying to get the speed of the game, but @ a 1/4 of a second, I still wasn't getting the look of exactly what I wanted... so I'm thinking of trying again at an faster speeds, but until I get it just right... just enough blur... that it looks like what I envision.
I saved the shots @ 58% of .jpg via lightroom... so they aren't the best in image quality, but I didn't feel like uploading overnight. And excuse the GIANT copyright... I'm sending them to a team manager for the team in white...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/55197309@N02/sets/72157648769889669/
OH... and for some reason, stupid windows photo viewer is showing the images a good 1 or 2 stops darker than what they are... so that is annoying... and I had to fight with LR5 to get the copyright even on the images... so it was a rough night...
and as a quick side note before I go to bed... I didn't notice the CA until I was halfway through... so the purple glow should be gone after all is said and done. and I think the WB is off... so... yeah... it is a very rough draft... but it is something to get better @