The New York Rangers 2022-23 season officially begins tonight, Oct. 11, with a 2022 Eastern Conference Final rematch, but Nicole Lee’s sixth-grade science students have been working on official New York Rangers hockey-related classwork prior to the start of season.

Students recently participated in the “New York Rangers Future Goals,” the online program sponsored by the NHL and NHLPA . It teaches students using interactive gameplay and real-world scenarios with the fast-paced game of professional ice hockey as the catalyst for learning science and math principles.

Using the program. Ms. Lee’s science students are having out-of-the box learning opportunities to refine and practice their STEM skills in a fun, innovative and interactive way which represents the creativity of Minisink Valley faculty.

The Future Goals STEM curriculum provides students the opportunity to develop STEM skills through online, interactive hockey math games, as well as other STEM sports activities and is designed to leverage STEM in hockey to create a fun and memorable learning experience.

The Future Goals program partners with EVERFI, an education technology company to present the material. Students virtually met with an EVERFI’s  implementation manager, who challenged students in a New York Ranger and hockey trivia game before reviewing how to access Future Goal learning topics.

Students were often surprised at how much they knew — or didn’t know — about the team or hockey in general. But, they also saw the important and sometimes unrealized science and math  applications used in the ice hockey world. How fast can a hockey player travel on the ice? What do hockey rink blue lines represent? Why are hockey pucks used in games are always frozen?

“The kids enjoyed it, and they also were able to understand how hockey reflects STEM, especially the science part,” said Ms. Lee.

They learned how geometry and physics play a role in an ice hockey game though these topics: the engineering behind equipment; calculating ice surface area and volume; the circumference, area of circles, radius  and diameter; states of matter and phase changes; examination of mass, velocity and kinetic energy; manipulating variables to run experiments; and data analysis and drawing conclusions.

The Rangers’ participation in the program is part of its “Rangers in the Community” program. Learn more by visiting: New York Rangers Future Goals Hockey Scholar Program.