When designing a AI system for a 3d hockey simulator game, what methods should you use, I`m new to AI so a few code that describes the concepts will be very appriciated.

Thats a rather large problem. This is because you want "human" player, and most
AI methods would calculate the perfect game (witch is imposible to beat!).

my sugestion:

#Give all your players assignments: CENTERATTACK, LEFTDEFEND...

#Give all the different assignments clues on what they should do in different game states: WE_ATTACK = GO TO X, THEY_ATTACK = BLOCK PLAYERS ...

#Figure out what state the game is in, so that all players know what they should do: WE_ATTACK, THEY_ATTACK, BREAK...

#Add a game manager witch gives special players special objectives: WHEN THEY_ATTACK, NEAREST PLAYER ATTACK PLAYER WITH PUCK. (these objectives overides other objectives.)

#Add a low level AI witch gets simple commands from the higher objectives. GO TO X, TACKLE, SHOOT, CHASE Y....

#Figure out witch low level commands should be used on each high level objective...

#Add it all together, and you got a nice hocky AI :-)

-Anders

Check out the book "Programming Game AI by Example"

Chapter 4 is an excellent example that implements a soccer game. Most of these principles can be directly applied to a hocky game.

Thanks alot..