I was using a 180mm f/2.8. I don't recommend using a fixed focal length though, but it's hard to get an affordable zoom in that general range that is as fast, so if you can deal with a fixed focal length, I'd give it a go. And yeah, I always have a bit of trouble with white balance and hockey, in every thread someone points it out. It might be your monitor, or it might be mine, I'm not sure entirely sure. Mine is calibrated to Nikon's color gamut, so I don't know if that matters.
I see a little bit of haloing around the players in the last two, but the white balance looks okay to me.
Do you shoot in RAW? if you do it doesn't really matter what you do white balance wise in the camera, you can get it right 99% of the time in the computer! Not saying you shouldn't shoot has accurate as possible tho.
Yeah, that's from the compression. I don't have that on the original size files. I was wondering if anyone would notice that. Thanks for your comments. And yeah, I shot them in JPEG because I was running out of room on my card from shooting earlier. I really need to pick up a second, or a bigger card, or both.