What kind of camera is best for indoor sports?

If I was choosing a camera for indoor sports, unquestionably, I would pick the Canon 1DX.

If you're using an older crop body, spending $2500 for a 70-200 f2.8 lens isn't going to solve your problems if the lighting is really bad.

You don't tell us what you are using now... which makes it much more difficult to give a good answer.

Christopher is simply wrong. You don't need a $5,000 camera to take advantage of a 70-200 f/2.8. They work just as well on crop sensor bodies.

If you are using a point and shoot, it will depend entirely on what you can control. Many of them give you little choice in how to take your photos, and this is where you run into those limitations.

Any DSLR with a decent lens can do what you want, but you are required to have some input into the process. You need to be able to set your shutter speed and ISO manually. At that point, even with a slower lens, you can get at least decent shots at a hockey game. Add in a faster lens and the images will be even better.

That's what the shutter speed does - control the amount of light entering the camera OR freeze motion.

If you're shooting indoors, you often have to choose one or the other, because the available light won't let you do both.

If your camera takes interchangeable lenses, you can invest in something that will open up to f2.8 or so, which can mitigate the effect at the expense of depth-of-field, and you can always up your ISO - at the expense of image quality - but you're pushing the edge of the envelope here.

You need to buy the #1 sports lens, a 70-200mm f/2.8. They are $1,200 or so from Sigma or Tamron, and $2,400 from Nikon or Canon.

Unfortunately, there is no substitute for a good lens.

Your only other option is to raise your ISO then use Photoshop Lightroom's noise reduction function to reduce noise.

Here is a website showing using a 70-300mm f/4.5~5.6 (which is not a good lens for indoor hockey), but at a high ISO of 6400 - then edited in Lightroom to reduce the noise:

http://www.althephoto.com/concepts/iso.php

Buy a better lens, not a better camera...