I've recently been named the "official" photographer of our local single A pro hockey team.  I went to practice yesterday and was incredibly disappointed with my photos.  Obviously not being an NHL team, the lighting wasn't the best in the world, but I can't use my flash due to shooting through the glass.  I was shooting my Nikon D200 with two different lenses, one with f3.5 and one with f4.5.  I was shooting with shutter priority at anywhere from 125 to 250 to catch the action and my ISO was set at 1600 or 3200.  Obviously my disappointment was with the noise from shooting such a high ISO.  However, I couldn't think of any other way to get the higher shutter speed I needed without compromising the ISO since the aperture was already open wide.  Would a zoom lens with an f2.8 make that much of a difference (with a $1,800 price tag - gulp!)?  Any other suggestions???  I'm not a professionally trained photographer - just someone who has taken their love of photography to new heights - so I won't be offended by any remarks!  Thanks!

 You may want to do as our resident expert Sport Shooter Homer does and go to AV mode and shoot wide open, This will force your camera to shoot at the highest shutter speed availeable for the light..

Were all of your shots when you shot in TV mode at full open aperture? Why I ask this is because of whta happens whan you shootv on ICE or snow...Because of all the White and the way the meter works, you may be getting underxeposed images and underexposure leads to more noise then high ISO does. So if your camaera was actually underexposing the shot, that may be the source of your noise.

You may want to try using Exposure compensation ( look it up in your manual if you don't already know how) and give it a boost of +1 stop. This may help the exposure and your noise Issues

A faster lens such as the 70-2002.8 would be nice, but if you can't afford that one,  and you can get close enough to the action you may want to try a lens like the 50mm 1.4 or the 85mm 1.8 to give you just a little more light into the camera.

Good luck, sports indoors under lights is tough!

 I guess Google spell check doesn't work with the new Firefox LOL

 The sports photographer that I know - pro baseball, uses two lenses most of the time - 200mm f/2.8 and 300mmf/2.8. Either one of those or a 70-200mm f/2.8 will do the job. Even a 135mm won't cut it. Of course shoot aperature priority and bump up the ISO to the highest acceptable level.

Also, use the on camera histogram to evaluate shots and instead of EV compensation get used to shooting in M - Manual mode.

 I did a tutorial on sports and custom white balance a week or 2 ago you might find interesting also, I would recommend at least a 2.8 lens.