How Long Is an NHL Game? Periods, Intermissions and Real Time

An NHL game is 60 minutes of game clock, played in three 20-minute periods. In real time it takes roughly two and a half hours, because the clock stops every time play stops and there are two 18-minute intermissions in the middle.

That gap — one hour of hockey inside a two-and-a-half-hour window — is the thing that surprises almost everyone watching their first game. Here's exactly where the time goes, why hockey uses three periods instead of halves or quarters, and how overtime changes the math.

The Short Answer

Where the Real Time Actually Goes

Regulation hockey is 60 minutes of clock and about 145 minutes of your evening. This is roughly how a typical game splits up:

The two intermissions alone account for 36 minutes — a quarter of the broadcast. During each one, an ice resurfacer (the machine most people call a Zamboni, after the company that popularized it) shaves and re-floods the entire sheet, which is why the break is as long as it is. Teams also switch which end they defend after every period.

Inside each period, the clock stops so often that 20 minutes of hockey stretches to something closer to 37. NHL teams take somewhere in the neighborhood of 55 to 60 faceoffs per game — a faceoff is the puck drop between two players that restarts play — and every one of those represents a stoppage where the clock was frozen. Add up to three commercial breaks per period, goal celebrations, penalty announcements, video reviews and injury stoppages, and the arithmetic works out.

Why the Clock Stops (and Football's Doesn't Stop as Often)

Hockey runs a strict stop clock. The moment a referee blows the whistle, the clock freezes and does not restart until the puck is dropped again. There is no running clock, no play clock, and no equivalent of football's rule that keeps time ticking after an inbounds tackle.

The most common stoppages a new viewer will see:

• A goal. Play stops, the goal is announced, and the puck is dropped at center ice.
• A penalty. The whistle goes, the offending player heads to the penalty box, and the clock sits still through the announcement. See NHL Penalty Rules: Minor, Major, Misconduct and Match, Explained for what each call costs.
• Icing. When a team shoots the puck from its own half all the way past the opposing goal line untouched, play stops and the faceoff comes back into the offending team's end. What Is Icing in Hockey walks through the exceptions.
• Offside. If an attacking player crosses the blue line — the thick colored line that marks the edge of each team's defensive zone — before the puck does, play stops. The area between the two blue lines is the neutral zone. What Is Offside in Hockey covers the review rules.
• The goaltender freezing the puck, the puck leaving the playing surface, or a broken stick or lost equipment.
• Video review, either league-initiated or through a coach's challenge.

Because the whistle is the only thing that starts and stops the clock, a wide-open game with few penalties can finish in a shade over two hours, while a chippy game with lots of calls and a long video review can push toward three.

Commercial Breaks: Three per Period

Beyond the intermissions, television takes scheduled breaks inside each period. Under the standard NHL broadcast format there are up to three per period, taken at the first stoppage after the 14:00, 10:00 and 6:00 marks of the period clock (NHL period clocks count down from 20:00).

There are conditions attached. A break is not taken after a goal, after an icing, or when one team is short-handed on a penalty, among other situations — so on a busy night, not all three get used, and networks may make one up after the final horn.

Timeouts: One Each, 30 Seconds

Each NHL team gets exactly one timeout per game, and it lasts 30 seconds. That is the whole allotment. Coaches usually save it for one of two purposes: drawing up a play before a critical offensive-zone faceoff late in a tight game, or resting a line that has been trapped on the ice through a long defensive shift and cannot change.

This is dramatically stingier compared with the other big American leagues, and it is a large part of why hockey's endgame moves faster than basketball's or football's.

The practical effect: an NHL game with two minutes left almost never bogs down. There is no way for a trailing coach to stop the clock repeatedly. The only tool is pulling the goaltender for an extra skater, which changes the game but not the clock.

Why Three Periods Instead of Two Halves

Hockey did not start this way. Early games were played as two 30-minute halves. The National Hockey Association — the professional league that folded into the NHL in 1917 — changed the format for its 1910–11 season, splitting games into three 20-minute periods with rest breaks in between.

The reason was ice, not drama. Skates chew a sheet of ice into snow and ruts, and in the era before mechanical resurfacers the surface had to be scraped and cleared by hand. Two breaks meant two chances to clean the ice instead of one, which made the second half of games safer and faster. The extra intermission also gave players more rest and gave arenas a second window to sell concessions — a business argument that has only gotten stronger.

Frank and Lester Patrick, the brothers behind a long list of early hockey innovations, are frequently credited with pushing the sport toward the three-period structure in this era. Whatever the exact authorship, the format stuck: more than a century later, every level of the sport from youth leagues to the Olympics still plays in thirds.

Overtime and Shootouts: How Much Longer?

If the score is tied after 60 minutes in the regular season, the game is not over — but it usually does not last much longer.

Regular season. Teams get a five-minute sudden-death overtime played 3-on-3, meaning three skaters plus a goaltender per side. The first goal ends it. There is no full intermission first — the ice crew clears the snow with shovels rather than running the resurfacer, and play resumes within a couple of minutes. Wide-open 3-on-3 hockey ends a large share of tied games quickly.

Shootout. If nobody scores in five minutes, the game goes to a shootout — three attempts per team, one skater against the goaltender, then sudden-death rounds if still level. A shootout typically adds only a few minutes.

Between the break, five minutes of clock and a possible shootout, an overtime game generally runs 15 to 25 minutes past regulation. Full details are in NHL Overtime and Shootout Rules Explained.

Playoff Overtime: No Ceiling

The Stanley Cup Playoffs throw the clock out entirely. There is no shootout in the postseason. Instead, teams play full 20-minute sudden-death periods at 5-on-5 — the same strength as regulation — with a 15-minute intermission and an ice resurfacing between each one, and they keep going until somebody scores.

That means a playoff game has no maximum length. A double-overtime game runs past three hours. A triple- or quadruple-overtime game can run past four. The league even builds in a mid-period ice cleaning during playoff overtime, taken at the first stoppage at or after the 10:00 mark of the period, to keep the surface playable.

The Longest Game in NHL History

On March 24, 1936, the Detroit Red Wings and the Montreal Maroons opened a best-of-five Stanley Cup semifinal series in Montreal and could not score. They played through regulation, then through five more scoreless overtime periods.

Rookie Mud Bruneteau finally beat Maroons goaltender Lorne Chabot at 16:30 of the sixth overtime. The final was Detroit 1, Montreal Maroons 0. That is 116 minutes and 30 seconds of overtime on top of the 60 minutes of regulation — 176:30 of playing time, nearly three full games in one night. The clock on the wall read 2:25 a.m. on March 25 when it ended. Detroit goaltender Normie Smith reportedly made 92 saves.

It is still the longest game ever played in the NHL. Here are the longest in league history, ranked by overtime played:

How NHL Game Length Compares

Hockey and football both put 60 minutes on the clock and land 40 minutes apart in real time. The difference is almost entirely stoppage management: the NFL huddles between plays, runs a 40-second play clock, and grants each team three timeouts per half, while the NHL simply drops the puck again. For the full breakdown on the other two, see How Long Is an NBA Game and How Long Is an NFL Game.

FAQ

How many periods are in a hockey game? Three, each 20 minutes long, for 60 minutes of regulation. If the game is tied after that, the regular season adds a five-minute overtime and, if needed, a shootout. The playoffs add as many 20-minute overtime periods as it takes.

How long is an NHL intermission? Eighteen minutes between periods. In the playoffs, the break before overtime and between overtime periods is 15 minutes, with a full ice resurfacing each time.

Why does a 60-minute game take two and a half hours? Because the clock stops on every whistle and never runs during a stoppage. Between two 18-minute intermissions, roughly 55 to 60 faceoffs, up to nine commercial breaks, goals, penalties and video reviews, the dead time roughly matches the live time.

How many timeouts does an NHL team get? One, and it is 30 seconds long. That is per game, not per period, and it does not carry over into overtime rules any differently — a team that has not used it can still call it in overtime.

Can an NHL game end in a tie? Not since the 2005–06 season. Every regular-season game is settled by overtime or a shootout, and every playoff game is settled by sudden-death overtime.

What is the longest NHL game ever played? Detroit's 1-0 win over the Montreal Maroons that began March 24, 1936, and ended at 2:25 a.m. on March 25 after 116:30 of overtime — six overtime periods.

Do NHL teams switch ends between periods? Yes, after every period, including in overtime. It is why the second period is known as the "long change": teams defend the end farther from their own bench, which makes line changes riskier and tends to produce more goals.

Is the NHL regular season changing? Yes — the schedule expands from 82 to 84 games beginning with the 2026–27 season, the first change to the length of the NHL regular season since 1993–94. Game length itself is unaffected.