The study was designed to make an age-specific anthropometric characteristics (body length and body mass) analysis of the six ice hockey teams (n=580) that competed in the last four Olympic Games in Turin (2006), Vancouver (2010), Sochi (2014) and PyeongChang (2018). It was found that the offense and defense pools may be provisionally classified by their anthropometric characteristics into the attack-only and offense-and-defense specialized offense subgroups; and the defense-only and defense-and-offense defense subgroups. The study findings may be interpreted as supportive of the latest trend in the professional ice hockey, with the strongest players` anthropometric characteristics noted to decrease and the field specialization tending to narrow. Knowing this trend, the selections to the beginner ice hockey groups shall no more give a high priority to the prospects` anthropometric characteristics and rather make an emphasis on the fast thinking and reactivity as required by the growing speeds of the modern game. It may be beneficial to complement the traditional game positions by the following four ones: offense-only, offense-and-defense, defense-only and defense-and-offense.
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