Night time hockey

Ok so now that im getting better aquainted with my camera.. time to start producing some pics that are not OOF and in better condition...

so
t2i
85mm f/1.8

any recommendations on what settings to try?
one thing i realized is i think i tried A-dep or whatever it is that auto sets ISO.. BIG MISTAKE!!! i have a 32gb card and just downloaded all the hockey pics... they are all in bad shape.. also was doing jpg only.. now doing raw and .jpg....

sample....
how do you place a flickr small pic here? then a link back to fullsize like others do?
i searched but didnt find a sticky.. hope i didnt over look it...

one is my kit lens at 18mm
other is to show it with the 85mm


so i have a crop body... do you apply the 1.6 rule to the ef-s lenses too??? so i know my 85mm is like a 135... is the kit a true 18???


http://www.flickr.com …/56197228@N05/5​218775053/

ok the bad 6400iso


http://www.flickr.com …218787815/in/ph​otostream/

ok so guess it aint too bad??????

1.6 crop factor applies to all lenses. EF-S lenses are designed to project a smaller image circle than and ef mount which is why they will not work on a full frame camera. If you put and EF-S lens on say a 5D you would see a huge black circle all the way around the image. Here is a direct quote from wikipedia so it could be slightly wrong and hopefully someone who knows more about it than I do can correct the mistakes.
The "S" in EF-S stands for "short back focus", which means that the rear element of the lens is closer to the image sensor than on regular 35 mm SLR cameras. The proximity of the rear element to the image sensor greatly enhances the possibilities for wide angle and very wide angle lenses, enabling them to be made smaller, lighter (containing less glass), faster (larger aperture) and less expensive. Most current Canon EF-S lenses are wide angle.

So in response to settings. Switch to Av or Tv Mode if you're not comfortable going full Manual. With the 85mm at f/1.8 the DOF at a focus distance of 100ft which is my best guess as to how far away the action is in the first shot is about 30 ft. So even with such a large aperture you should have no problems keeping the players in focus at that distance. To me it looks like your shutter speed is way to slow and is causing a lot of motion blur. For stopping action in sports I wouldn't go much slower than 1/500th as a general rule of thumb. Also make sure you switch to AI Servo focus mode. If you can, I would also suggest to get closer to the action; that's a pretty huge crop IMO.

Shooting at night is definitely a challenge in sports the biggest thing I have found is to read up as much as you can and then after that its trial and error at the events. You definitely have a fast enough lens for the job. I have shot some motocross-esque events with a 50 1.8 at night in HORRIBLE lighting conditions and gotten decent results which I have posted below. I did get a lot of bad shots and the main reason I think is that I didn't follow the advice about shutter speed I just gave lol. I had my ISO set at 1000, Av, and f/1.8 so the camera was picking the shutter speed and it floated between 1/60 and 1/125 range maybe higher in some instances. So I probably should have cranked the ISO to 3200 since I've read that the 7d produces pretty good images at 3200 and even 6400. Well I'm done ranting now and keep in mind that I am just a beginner like you. I've got about 1 baseball season, a couple of night soccer games, and 3 motocross-esque night races under my belt as far as night time shooting is concerned.