Call It Floorball

by Dan Torretta 9/11/2026

Why are we all so scared to call the sport we play by its proper name? We keep trying to sell it as hockey when that's not what it is. Ball hockey, gym hockey, court hockey, and the worst of them, floorball hockey. But floorball is its own sport with its own rules and its own equipment, and not one of those hockey names tells you that.

Everyone that plays this sport was at one time introduced to it for the first time. You didn't need to be tricked into playing it by calling it something that it's not. I remember Googling floor hockey and discovering floorball by accident. My first thought wasn't that this game needed to be more like the hockey I was used to. I fell in love with it for what it was -- the sticks, the ball, the technique. To me it was everything I loved about hockey without the bulky equipment. The perfect form of the umbrella term "floor hockey."

Everyone has played floor hockey in gym class. They used the same crappy wooden sticks with a flimsy plastic blade. It was fun, but it was cumbersome. The problem floor hockey has always had is that it tries to chase what ice hockey is when you don't have ice available.

That's what makes floorball so special. It solves the problem by shortening the sticks, making them lighter, and building rules that make it its own sport. A game that focuses on skill without worrying about getting your head taken off by someone who signed up for beer league just to hit somebody as hard as he can. So why are we still selling it as floorball hockey?

The community seems so scared that people won't know what it is, but that's the appeal of it. Floorball is new, ball hockey is not. Someone who won't try it because of the name is not going to become a player anyway. Tricking someone into thinking they're about to play hockey only gets them mad when they can't stick lift like they're used to. We want people to approach this game like they've never played it, because they've never played it.

When we go to our weekly pickup nights we want to play floorball, not hockey. Floorball sticks were designed for floorball, not hockey. Trying to play hockey with floorball sticks is the worst of both worlds. The game only flows the way it should when you play it the right way. Anyone who wants to play hockey can go do it somewhere else. Floorball will be there for them if they decide to play.

But floorball can also be more than just a fun thing to do once a week. We have a national governing body backing us. We have an international governing body backing us! You can point people to pro leagues in Europe and World Championships to watch on YouTube. We’re more organized than any other version of floor hockey.

This is not hockey light. A D1 hockey team isn't going to show up at Nationals and sweep the competition because they have a background in a stick sport. We know this -- yet we continue to sell the sport as if we're afraid it will be rejected. Let it be rejected by those who want to reject it. We're not going to get everyone to play. But the ones who will play will become as dedicated as we are, and that's what we should be after.

So please - Call it floorball.

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