Overtime, Oilers and octopi. Here's our brief guide to the NHL.

Maybe you met her while shopping in Camden Market. Your heart was stirred by her doleful Alanis Morissette eyes and sweet, nasally Canadian accent. Fast-forward a couple of years and you’re sharing a flat, a dog and – God help you – spending Christmas at her parents’ house in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

It is here that you experience your first Canadian Saturday night. While the prairie snowpocalypse rages outside, you sit by a crackling fire eating Nanaimo bars and sipping Bloody Caesars (tomato juice + clam broth + vodka = delicious). Soon, the whole family congregates around the tube to watch the nation’s longest-running TV show: Hockey Night in Canada.

Feeling overwhelmed? Relax and allow me to provide this brief guide to watching ice hockey in the Great White North.