A youth hockey warmup is fifteen to twenty minutes of locker room, hallway, and ice, and the music has a different job in each one. Below is the warmup playlist we run block by block, with the exact start time for every track so you are not paying for a 40 second intro on a 3 minute stretch. We have also flagged the songs where the explicit version is the one that shows up first, because that is the single most common way a rink DJ has a bad morning.

The explicit version problem, first, because it is the real one

Half the great hockey anthems have language in them. Not most, but enough that "grab the popular hockey playlist and press play" is how a Squirt B locker room ends up hearing a word at 7:10 on a Saturday.

Three habits fix it permanently.

Check the E tag in advance. Apple Music marks explicit tracks with a small E next to the title. Sort through your warmup list on a weeknight and swap anything flagged for its clean version.

Know that clean is not always available. Some tracks simply do not have a clean master, and no amount of hunting produces one. When that happens, cut the song. There are forty other options and none of them are worth the conversation with a parent.

Re-check the start time after you swap. Clean edits are occasionally a slightly different master, and a cue tuned to the explicit version can land a second or two off. Test once, then forget about it for the rest of the season.

Songs on this page that commonly need the clean version: "Can’t Hold Us," "Party Rock Anthem," "Uptown Funk," "24K Magic," and "I Gotta Feeling." Separately, some associations get uneasy about titles more than lyrics, so if your rink has a rule, "Highway to Hell" is the one they mean.

Block 1: Locker room, gear going on

This is background, not hype. The kids are tying skates and the coach is talking. Keep it recognizable and mid-tempo, and keep the volume low enough that a nine-year-old can hear an adult from across the room.

  • Sunroof Nicky Youre & hey daisy Skips the ramp-in and starts on the groove.
  • Blinding Lights The Weeknd The synth line, not the pad wash that opens it.
  • APT. ROSÉ & Bruno Mars Straight to the chant. The younger the team, the more this one works.
  • Shake It Off Taylor Swift No trim needed, the drums are the first sound.
  • Lil Boo Thang Paul Russell Another cold open, and an easy clean pick.
  • Fancy Like Walker Hayes Chorus first. Half your locker room already knows every word.

Block 2: Off-ice warmup in the hallway

Now it is jumps, stick handling, and a soccer ball in a corridor. Tempo goes up, and this is where you want songs a whole team can move to without anyone feeling self-conscious.

  • Can’t Stop the Feeling! Justin Timberlake The full chorus. The verses are a lot of nothing when kids are trying to get their heart rate up.
  • Uptown Funk Mark Ronson feat. Bruno Mars Straight into "uptown funk you up," skipping a full minute of setup.
  • Levels Avicii Vocal hook immediately.
  • High Hopes Panic! At the Disco Horns from the first frame, one of the cleanest cold opens in the whole catalog.
  • Can’t Hold Us Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Clean version. Piano and drums together.
  • Centuries Fall Out Boy Lands on the chant instead of the ambient open.

Block 3: Taking the ice

This is the one moment of the pregame that is genuinely a moment. One song, same song every week, loud. Kids notice patterns, and by December the first note of this track will do more for the bench than anything a coach says.

  • Sirius The Alan Parsons Project The famous entrance section. The first 29 seconds are the part nobody has ever heard, because every arena on earth skips them.
  • Thunderstruck AC/DC Where the drums and bass drop in under the guitar. Starting at zero gives you 28 seconds of a lone guitar over an empty rink.
  • Enter Sandman Metallica The riff proper. Everything before it is a slow build that dies in a cold building.
  • The Greatest Show The Greatest Showman Ensemble An underrated pick for Mites and Squirts, and the stomp is enormous on a bad PA.

Pick one. Not four.

Block 4: Skating and stretch laps

Steady, driving, nothing that demands attention. This is when you can leave the phone alone for three minutes and go find the scorekeeper.

  • Believer Imagine Dragons First hit.
  • Warriors Imagine Dragons Straight to the chorus, which is the only part of this song a warmup needs.
  • Legends Are Made Sam Tinnesz Where the drums arrive and the track stops whispering.
  • Titanium David Guetta feat. Sia The drop. A minute and sixteen seconds of build is a lovely thing in headphones and dead air at a rink.
  • The Nights Avicii Full band and hook together.

Block 5: Shooting drill and the last two minutes

Loudest block of the warmup. Kids are ripping pucks, parents are finding seats, and the room should feel like something is about to start.

  • Kickstart My Heart Mötley Crüe Past the siren intro and into the riff.
  • Eye of the Tiger Survivor Where the full band lands. Yes it is a cliché. It also works on eleven-year-olds every single time.
  • All My Life Foo Fighters The heavy section, skipping the quiet picking that opens it.
  • Immigrant Song Led Zeppelin Essentially a cold open, straight to the wail.
  • Back In Black AC/DC The riff, four seconds in, no waiting.
  • We Will Rock You Queen The stomp-stomp-clap is already established, and the crowd joins in without being asked.
  • Could Have Been Me The Struts Chorus first. A great last song before the horn.

Adjusting by age

8U and 10U: lean on Block 1 and Block 2 material for the whole warmup. Small kids respond to songs they know from the car, not to songs that sound tough. "Sunroof," "APT.," "High Hopes," and "The Greatest Show" outperform every metal track on this page at that age.

12U and 14U: this is the sweet spot for the full list. The taking-the-ice moment starts to matter to them, so commit to one entrance song and never change it.

16U and up: you can go heavier through Blocks 4 and 5, and they will tell you exactly what they want. Let them pick two songs, keep veto power, and check every suggestion for a clean version before it goes on the board.

Build it once, then stop rebuilding it

The warmup is the part of the job that should be automatic by the third game. In SportSongs the hockey warmup boards come with these start times already tuned, they run offline when the rink has no signal, and a team share code sends your entire board to the other manager so the backup parent has the identical setup when you are out of town. You can drop in your own audio files too, which is how most teams handle a team-specific tradition.

Once the warmup is set, the two remaining pieces are the celebration and everything in between. See Top Goal Songs for the 2026-27 Season and How to Be the Rink DJ. Every song on the featured boards is listed with its start time on the boards page — we refresh it every month through the season.