Scanning is associated with better performance in professional ice hockey.

Although active exploration of environmental information is essential for specifying one's action opportunities in team sports, knowledge about the relationship between visual exploratory behaviour and successful actions in ice hockey is scarce. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether scanning prior to pass reception was associated with a higher probability of a successful outcome of the following action among professional ice hockey players. A total of 43 male and 45 female ice hockey players participated in the study.