Hockey players kick a soccer ball around before games as a warm-up ritual that doubles as a competitive bonding exercise. The tradition is so deeply embedded in hockey culture that it has its own name: “sewer ball” (also called “two touch”). Nearly every NHL locker room runs some version of it on game days, and some teams take it seriously enough to maintain leaderboards and ranking systems.
How Sewer Ball Works
Sewer ball isn’t a full soccer match. Players form a circle and pass a soccer ball around using only their feet. Each player gets a maximum of two touches before passing to someone else. If the ball hits the ground or a pass doesn’t reach a teammate, the player who last touched it is eliminated. The circle shrinks until one player remains.
Strategy matters more than you might expect. Players target specific rivals for elimination, and regulars learn each other’s tendencies over the course of a season. As one NHL player put it, “Your last three months of the year, it’s the same guys going after the same guys.” Connor Bedard said his junior team, the Saskatoon Blades, played roughly two hours a day and had a full ranking system. They were eventually told to scale it back. Dallas Stars winger Mason Marchment maintains an official leaderboard for his team.
The Physical Warm-Up Benefits
Sewer ball serves a real athletic purpose beyond killing time. It gets players on their feet, loosens up their legs, and primes the body for the kind of quick, reactive movements hockey demands. Foot-eye coordination translates directly to the ice: players who are comfortable controlling objects with their feet tend to be better at kicking loose pucks to their stick, winning battles along the boards, and maintaining edge control on their skates. A few rounds of sewer ball stretches the same muscle groups players will rely on during the game without the intensity of a full skating warm-up.
Why It Sticks as a Tradition
The real staying power of sewer ball comes from what it does for the room, not just the body. NHL game days involve a lot of downtime. Players arrive at the arena hours before puck drop, and there’s only so much stretching and stick-taping to fill the gap. Sewer ball gives everyone, from stars to fourth-liners, something to do together. Wyatt Johnston of the Dallas Stars described it as good bonding that “gets the chirping going” and puts players in a competitive mindset before they hit the ice.
Not everyone buys into the physical benefits. New Jersey Devils star Jack Hughes is openly skeptical. “I can’t say it gets anyone prepared,” he said. But even he plays, pointing out that the alternative is just sitting around with nothing to do. That honesty captures something important about the tradition: whether or not sewer ball makes you a better hockey player on any given night, it fills a social and psychological role that keeps the locker room loose and connected. Bedard called it “probably the best part of the pre-game.”
Beyond the NHL
Sewer ball isn’t exclusive to professional hockey. The tradition runs through junior leagues, college programs, and even youth hockey. Any team with a soccer ball and a hallway can get a game going, which is part of why it spread so widely. It requires zero equipment beyond what’s already lying around most arenas, works with any number of players, and scales naturally in intensity. A group of 14-year-olds and a group of NHL veterans play essentially the same game with the same rules. That simplicity, combined with the genuine competitiveness it brings out, is why soccer before hockey has become one of the sport’s most universal pregame rituals.