July 1 is Canada Day. Canada has two national sports. Lacrosse is the summer sport and ice hockey is the winter sport. There are no online slot games based on lacrosse, but there are ice hockey themed online slots. This article reviews two such slot games on the occasion of Canada Day.

The first ice hockey themed online slot is titled Hockey Hero and it has been developed by Realtime Gaming. The symbols on the reels include goalie, umpire, trophy, mask, puck, skates, tickets, peanuts and beer. The ice hockey player is the wild symbol. It appears on reels 2 and 4 and doubles payouts. In the animation the player hits the puck. The penalty box is the scatter symbol and offers scatter payouts that are multiplied by the total bet. In the animation the player in the penalty box vents his anger.

Hockey Hero has an exciting free games feature that is triggered when three or more penalty boxes appear anywhere on the reels. In the first instance all the peanuts symbols are removed from the reels and a clock symbol is added to reel 1. After every three free spins another symbol is entirely removed and another clock symbol is added to a reel. The free spins are played till 18 are completed or till two clock symbols appear simultaneously on the reels. Since the free spins can get aborted prematurely, Hockey Hero incorporates the popular Realtime Gaming Win-Win feature. This compensates players for a poor performance in the free spins. Hockey Hero is live at Realtime Gaming online casinos like Club World and Silver Oak.

The Playtech online slot is titled Ice Hockey. The player first has to choose two teams. Canada is obviously a contender. The flags of the chosen teams appear on the reels as do three players from each team. The players of one team pay left to right and the players of the other team pay right to left. The high value card symbols have ice hockey accessories and pay out in both directions. The wild symbol is the goal. It offers the largest fixed jackpot of 10,000 coins. Most of the symbols in Playtech Ice Hockey offer payouts only when two of them appear aligned on active paylines and this is a major attraction. The Ice Hockey logo is a scatter symbol and offers scatter payouts.

The flags of the two teams are free spins symbols. 12 free spins are triggered when the flag of the same team appears simultaneously on reels 1 and 5. Players only from that team appear on the reels and pay out in both directions. The bonus game is triggered if the puck appears anywhere on reel 2 and a left side team member on its immediate left or if it appears anywhere on reel 4 and a right side team member on its immediate right. The puck is then passed between all the team players appearing on the reels. The payout is three times the total bet for every player that touches the puck. This feature is available in the main game only. Ice Hockey is live at Playtech online casinos like Bet365 and Paddy Power.