There are 18 offensive players on the hockey team. How many ways can the coach choose a left wing, center, and right wing to start the game?

4896 ways

Step-by-step explanation:

We have a total of 18 players, and we want to form groups of three, where the order matters, because there are different roles for each player, so this is a permutation problem.

We solve this problem calculating a permutation of 18 choose 3:

P (18,3) = 18! / (18-3) ! = 18! / 15! = 18 * 17 * 16 = 4896

So the coach has 4896 ways to choose the left wing, center and right wing.