Ice Hockey Slot

Ice Hockey is a new, interactive Playtech sports slot perfect for ice hockey fans and entertaining for regular slots enthusiasts too. The game features national squads from the great ice hockey nations, the USA, Canada, Germany, Finland, Sweden, Russia and the Czech Republic. You choose the two sides you want to see do battle on the ice, and the game begins! Ice Hockey’s reels are packed with symbols related to the sport and the music and cheering crowds make for an authentic rink-side atmosphere. You’ll love the Pass the Puck Bonus Round where the puck is passed around the reels, as well as the free spins feature. Real-money players will be delighted by the generous mixed pay feature; more information about that bellow. All in all, Ice Hockey is a great sports slot for some free spins in the winter months.

Symbols

The regular symbols on the Ice Hockey Slot are a mixture of high value playing cards from 9 to Ace and the ice hockey players themselves. But there’s a twist. Firstly, Playtech haven’t gone for run-of-the-mill playing card symbols. Instead the cards’ values appear as ice sculptures, each accompanied by a piece of ice hockey equipment, such as skates or gloves. Secondly, because this interactive slot game allows you to choose two of seven different teams to feature on the reels, the ice hockey player symbols change depending on which teams you’ve picked. Each player appears in his national team kit and with his country’s flag. You change your teams and the player symbols by clicking on the CHANGE TEAM button in the upper left and the upper right corners of the screen, above the reels.

The special symbols are FREE GAMES symbols (these appear as national flags and vary according to your choice of team). The PASS THE PUCK BONUS symbol (a puck, funnily enough), the SCATTER (the Ice Hockey symbol) and the WILD (a goal net).

All the symbols display some animations when triggered in an active payline. These are generally alone the lines of pulsating playing cards and a few sparkles. The bonus round animations are the best in this sports slot (the same goes for other sports slots here at FreeSlots, such as Football Legends and Football Stars).

Wagers and Jackpots

Playtech’s Ice Hockey slot is a 5-reel, 15 payline slot. If you play this sports slot for real money, you can wager between 0.01 and 5.00 per line in whichever currency you use. This means that even though the slot has fewer paylines than many of Playtech’s other slot games, real money players can still hook a large payout from a regular spin. Speaking of which, your maximum real-money payout from one spin is 10,000 coins for 5 WILD symbols on a payline. The minimum is 1 coin for 2 SCATTERS. The MIXED PAY feature is another that applies only to real-money players (although it’s fun in play-for-free mode too). This feature allows you to land a winning combination of symbols in both directions on the reels. Basically, any combination of players from the same team on a payline, even if they are not exactly the same player symbol, is still counted as a win. MIXED PAY combinations payout both on the main games reels and on the free games reels. The Royal cards (Jack, Queen, King) also pay in both directions.

Other ways to win

• FREE GAMES: this feature is triggered when the free games flag symbol of a single team lands on both reels 1 and 5 simultaneously after a spin. The reward is 12 free spins. You can’t win more free spins within the free games feature, but bear in mind that all symbol combinations pay in both directions during this round, including mixed pay combinations.
• PASS THE PUCK BONUS ROUND: this is triggered when the puck symbol lands anywhere on the second reel with a left side team member on its immediate left, or anywhere on the 4^th reel with a right side team member on its immediate right. Watch as the team passes the puck around the reels from player to player. You are rewarded with a x3 multiplier for each player that touches the puck on its way round.

Music, audio and graphics

The graphics and color in this game are really crisp and attractive, even if the animations aren’t Playtech’s most advanced. The music and the noise of the fans in the bleachers make for a great atmosphere.

The Last Word

All slots fans will enjoy a few free spins on this game, but ice hockey fans will get more out of it and will probably spin for longer. The bonus round is fun (and easily triggered even in free-play mode, at least in our experience) but not as interactive as those of some of Playtech’s other games. The main thrill comes from picking the teams. Eight out of ten.