[rommel22]

You don't have to 'play the ball' per say, but keep this in mind:

From the rule book, you are not allowed to make contact with any player while any part of his body other then his feet are in contact with the ground (you can check his stick, however.) Now if you remember your face-off rules, both players must place their gloved hands on the ground to be in a proper (not illegal) face-off stance. So it would seam impossible to even touch a player right from the sounding of the whistle. However, any face-off middle will tell you that every face-off has contact between the two face-off men. Officials will tell players to 'play the ball' only in an effort to get the ball out of the pack and in someone's stick. This is where officials are trying to avoid having any penalties by incouraging the players to work the ball out for themselves. Now the wing area players are not allowed to come in to the face-off full boar and just wipeout the face-off guys. That's very illegal and could result in more then just one minute in penalty time.

You are not required to play the ball right from the face-off, but if you don't at least attempt it, there is a much higher probability that YOU will get a penalty, and not your opponent.