Hockey pants are knee-to-waist protective gear for ice hockey

Ice hockey

Ice hockey, often referred to as hockey, is a team sport played on ice, in which skaters use wooden or composite sticks to shoot a hard rubber puck into their opponent's net. The game is played between two teams of six players each. Five members of each team skate up and down the ice trying to take...

 or roller hockey

Roller hockey

Roller Hockey is a form of hockey played on a dry surface using skates with wheels. The term "Roller Hockey" is often used interchangeably to refer to two variant forms chiefly differentiated by the type of skate used. There is traditional "Roller Hockey," played with quad roller skates, and...

 players. The pants carry a variety of padding

Padding

Padding is thin cushioned material sometimes added to clothes. It is often done in an attempt to soften impacts on certain zones of the body or enhance appearance by 'improving' a physical feature, often a sexually significant one...

 depending on whether they are worn by goaltender

Goaltender

In ice hockey, the goaltender is the player who defends his team's goal net by stopping shots of the puck from entering his team's net, thus preventing the opposing team from scoring...

s or skaters (forwards and
defenders

Defenceman (ice hockey)

Defence in ice hockey is a player position whose primary responsibility is to prevent the opposing team from scoring...

), and also on the manufacturer.

The pants are traditionally a one-piece garment with a lace

Lace

Lace is an openwork fabric, patterned with open holes in the work, made by machine or by hand. The holes can be formed via removal of threads or cloth from a previously woven fabric, but more often open spaces are created as part of the lace fabric. Lace-making is an ancient craft. True lace was...

-up fly augmented by a strap belt

Belt (clothing)

A belt is a flexible band or strap, typically made of leather or heavy cloth, and worn around the waist. A belt supports trousers or other articles of clothing.-History:...

. Sometimes, they are additionally held up by suspenders

Suspenders

Suspenders or braces are fabric or leather straps worn over the shoulders to hold up trousers. Straps may be elasticated, either entirely or only at attachment ends and most straps are of woven cloth forming an X or Y shape at the back. Braces are typically attached to trousers with buttons...

(particularly in the case of goalie pants).

A type of pant called Cooperalls

Cooperalls

Cooperalls are a type of discontinued ice hockey equipment, which were made by hockey manufacturer Cooper. Cooperalls were invented by the late Senior Designer, Brian Heaton, who worked for Cooper Canada for 5 years from 1972-1975. Over the girdle is a shell, which came in two sizes: a traditional...

 was seen in a failed experiment in professional hockey by the Philadelphia Flyers

Philadelphia Flyers

The Philadelphia Flyers are a professional ice hockey team based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are members of the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Hockey League...

 in the 1981–82 NHL season and by both the Flyers and Hartford Whalers

Hartford Whalers

The Hartford Whalers were a professional ice hockey team based for most of its existence in Hartford, Connecticut, U.S.A.. The club played in the World Hockey Association from 1972–79 and in the National Hockey League from 1979–97...

 in the 1982–83 NHL season. The name stems from the manufacturer, Cooper

Cooper Canada Ltd.

Cooper Canada Ltd. was a sporting goods and fine leather goods manufacturer based in Toronto, Canada. In its heyday, the 1960s through to the 1980s, the company was Canada's leading producer of leather baseball gloves and protective ice hockey equipment...

. The Cooperalls were a full-length pair of shell pants that covered protective padding from the waist

Waist

The waist is the part of the abdomen between the rib cage and hips. On proportionate people, the waist is the narrowest part of the torso....

 to the ankles, as opposed to the traditional pant and shin guard

Shin guard

A shin guard or shin pad is a piece of equipment worn on the front of a player’s shin to protect them from injury. These are commonly used in sports including association football, baseball, ice hockey, field hockey, lacrosse, rugby, cricket, and other sports...

 combination. A half length version, sometimes called a Cooper girdle

Girdle

A girdle is a garment that encircles the lower torso, perhaps extending below the hips, and worn often for support. The word girdle originally meant a belt. In modern English, the term girdle is most commonly used for a form of women's foundation wear that replaced the corset in popularity...

, was introduced and is currently available from a few gear manufacturers.

Hockey pants are also called breezers, however, no one knows why.