Somebody handed you the aux cord and said "you’ve got music this week." Here is the whole job: you play short bursts of music in the gaps between whistles, you never play over live action, and you make the building feel like something is happening. This guide covers the gear, the rules, the five cues you need, and the exact start times we use, written for a volunteer who has never done this before and has a game in two days.
What the job actually is
You are working six moments. That is it.
- Warmup, the twenty minutes before puck drop
- The team taking the ice
- Whistles and stoppages, roughly ten to fifteen seconds each
- Goals by your team
- Intermissions and the ice cut
- The final horn
Everything else is silence, and silence is fine. New rink DJs almost always play too much. Music during a faceoff or a penalty kill makes the game harder for the officials and the coaches, and it makes the moments that should feel big feel like nothing.
Know the rules before you play a note
Every association is a little different, so ask your rink manager or a board member these four questions before your first game. It takes one text message.
When is music allowed? Most youth leagues permit music only during stoppages, warmups, and intermissions, and want it off when the linesman sets up for the faceoff.
Who has final say on volume? Usually the rink manager, sometimes the head official. Whoever it is, they win.
Is there a lyric policy? Some associations have one in writing. Follow it exactly and use the clean version even when nobody is checking.
What happens for the anthem? Someone has a specific way they want this handled. Ask, do not improvise.
And three things that need no policy: nothing plays during an injury stoppage, nothing plays that mocks the other team or an official, and nothing plays while a coach is trying to run a timeout.
The twenty minute setup before your first game
Get to the rink early, before parents show up, and do this once. After the first game it takes three minutes.
Find the input. In a youth rink it is usually a 3.5mm jack in the scorer’s box, sometimes a small mixer, occasionally a Bluetooth receiver nobody has paired since 2019. Bluetooth is the one to avoid if you have a choice, because it introduces a delay and it drops.
Bring your own cable and adapter. A 6 to 10 foot 3.5mm cable and the right adapter for your phone or iPad. The rink’s cable exists, it is frayed, and it works in one channel. Bring your own and leave the rink’s alone.
Set the volume with the building empty, then add a little. A full rink absorbs sound. What sounds correct with nobody in it will sound thin with 150 people in the stands. Play your loudest cue, walk to the far corner, and listen from there, not from the box.
Turn on Do Not Disturb. A text notification through a rink PA at full volume is a thing you only allow to happen once.
Turn off auto-lock. Or at least stretch it out. Nothing is worse than unlocking a phone with gloves on while your team is celebrating.
Plan for no signal. Rink wifi is a rumor and cell service inside a metal box with a refrigeration plant is worse. Whatever you use has to work with nothing coming in. Download everything ahead of time and test in airplane mode at home.
The five cues, in game order
Here is the actual set. Every start time below is the second we begin the track, so the hook lands immediately instead of after an intro.
Cue 1: Taking the ice
One song, the same one every game. This is the only cue where the build is part of the point, and it still should not start at zero.
- Sirius The Alan Parsons Project The entrance section every arena uses.
- Thunderstruck AC/DC Where the drums drop in under the guitar.
Cue 2: Stoppage bursts
Ten to fifteen seconds, then out. You want instant recognition and a clean place to cut.
- Crowd Chant Joe Satriani First call and response.
- Blitzkrieg Bop Ramones "Hey ho, let’s go" is the first sound.
- Are You Gonna Be My Girl Jet Full band, no handclap intro.
- Whoomp! There It Is Tag Team Lands on the title line.
Cue 3: The goal
Two songs maximum. Repetition is what makes one of them belong to your team.
- Chelsea Dagger The Fratellis The chant. Starting at zero spends the entire celebration on the intro.
- Song 2 Blur The "woo-hoo" and the distortion in the same instant.
- Seven Nation Army The White Stripes When the drums land under the riff.
- Rose Tattoo Dropkick Murphys A true cold open.
Stack a goal horn in front of whichever one you choose and use the exact same pair all season. The full breakdown lives in Top Goal Songs for the 2026-27 Season.
Cue 4: Intermission and the ice cut
Longer, lighter, and mostly for the parents and the little siblings running the concourse.
- Uptown Funk Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars Clean version.
- Can’t Stop the Feeling! Justin Timberlake Straight to the chorus.
- All Star Smash Mouth Chorus first.
- Cotton Eye Joe Rednex Fiddle hook.
- Sunroof Nicky Youre & hey daisy Starts on the groove.
Cue 5: Final horn
Have both outcomes ready. Playing a celebration track after a loss is the rookie mistake nobody warns you about.
- We Are the Champions Queen The chorus, for a big win.
- Don’t Stop Believin’ Journey Cold open, works after almost any result.
- Sweet Caroline Neil Diamond Straight to the chorus and the crowd part.
After a loss, play nothing. Let the handshake line be quiet. Parents notice.
Volume, timing, and the three second rule
Come in fast, get out faster. Start the track the moment the whistle goes, and cut it the moment the officials move toward the dot. Fading out is nice when you have the hardware for it. Cutting cleanly is fine and nobody will notice.
Three seconds of dead air is invisible. Three seconds of intro is not. This is the whole argument for start times. An audience forgives silence and remembers a song that took eight seconds to arrive.
Loud during the celebration, not during the setup. If you have a volume knob, ride it. Goals and the entrance are the peaks. Everything else lives underneath conversation.
Never speak over an official. If you have a microphone, the referee’s arm going up ends your sentence.
Announcing players
If your rink expects names, keep them short and formulaic: number, then name, one line, done. "Number 14, Sofia Bergqvist." Do not editorialize, do not read the assist twice, do not do a voice.
The AI announcer in SportSongs handles this without you having to talk into a microphone at all. You enter your roster, set the pronunciation for the names that need it (the ones you would otherwise practice in the car), and it says them the same way every time. That matters more than it sounds like it does. Getting a kid’s name right in front of their grandparents is a small thing that people remember for years.
The mistakes everyone makes their first game
- Playing during live action. Stop at the puck drop, every time.
- Relying on the rink’s cable, the rink’s adapter, or the rink’s Bluetooth.
- Building a 40 song playlist and hunting through it with mittens on. You need eight tiles, not forty.
- Forgetting Do Not Disturb.
- Assuming there is signal in the building.
- Playing the win song after a loss.
- Starting every track at 0:00 and wondering why the crowd never reacts.
Set it up once and hand it off
The reason to build this properly is that you will not always be the one doing it. Someone else takes the aux cord when you are on a work trip, and they should not have to rebuild anything.
SportSongs is what we use for exactly this. The hockey boards come with the start times above already tuned, goal horns are on the board next to the songs, everything is a tile you tap with one hand, and it runs fully offline so a dead rink connection is not your problem. It works on an iPad if you would rather have a bigger target in the scorer’s box, and a team share code sends your complete board to the next parent in one step, so their setup is identical to yours. You play music you already own or stream through your own Apple Music subscription, and you can import your own audio for anything your team has made its own. The same app handles baseball and softball boards when the season flips.
Once the board is built, the two lists worth stealing from are Top Goal Songs for the 2026-27 Season and The Youth Hockey Warmup Playlist. Every song on the featured boards is listed with its start time on the boards page — we refresh it every month through the season.