How Many Periods in Hockey? Game Length, Overtime and Shootouts

A hockey game has three periods of 20 minutes each, so regulation is 60 minutes of playing time. In real time, an NHL game that ends in regulation usually takes somewhere around two and a half hours, because the clock stops on every whistle and the league schedules an 18-minute intermission after each of the first two periods.

That simple answer gets more interesting once a game is tied after 60 minutes. The NHL settles regular season games with a short 3-on-3 overtime and then a shootout, while the Stanley Cup Playoffs keep playing full 20-minute periods until somebody scores. Below is how each piece works, with the rule numbers from the NHL's 2026-27 Official Rules where it helps, plus quick notes on college and international hockey.

Three 20-minute periods, with a stopped clock

Rule 77.1 of the NHL rulebook sets the length of a game at three 20-minute periods of actual play, with a rest intermission between periods. The key word is actual. Hockey uses a stop-time clock: it runs only while the puck is live and freezes on every whistle, whether for an offside, an icing, a penalty, a goal or a puck that flies into the crowd.

Teams switch ends after every period. That has a small tactical side effect. In the second period each team defends the goal farther from its own bench, so tired players have a longer skate to get off the ice. Hockey people call this the long change, and it is one reason second periods often feel looser than the first and third.

A few other basics are worth knowing:

• Each period starts with a faceoff at center ice.
• The public address announcer tells the crowd when one minute remains in each period.
• Each team gets one 30-second timeout per game, regular season or playoffs (Rule 87.1).
• Commercial timeouts happen at normal stoppages and are not charged to either team.

How long hockey intermissions last

The NHL rulebook lists intermissions at 18 minutes, unless the league designates a different length (Rules 34.2 and 77.2). The intermission clock does not start the instant the horn sounds. It starts once the last official has left the ice, and arena staff use those minutes to resurface the sheet with an ice resurfacing machine, the big machine many fans call by the brand name Zamboni.

If something unusual happens late in a period, such as a broken pane of glass or a problem with the ice, the referee can send the teams to intermission early. If the delay comes within the last five minutes of the first or second period, the referee may order the intermission right away, and the leftover time is played when the teams return, before they change ends and start the next period.

How long a hockey game takes in real time

Start with the fixed pieces. Sixty minutes of play plus two 18-minute intermissions comes to 96 minutes before a single whistle has stopped the clock. Everything else is stoppage time: faceoffs after icings and offsides, penalties being sorted out, goal celebrations, video reviews, the occasional fight and the TV breaks.

Real box scores show how that plays out. Hockey-Reference lists a game duration for every NHL game. On October 14, 2025, the Edmonton Oilers beat the New York Rangers 2-0 in a game that lasted 2 hours 19 minutes, while the Dallas Stars beat the Minnesota Wild 5-2 in 2 hours 32 minutes the same night. Both ended in regulation. That range is typical of what you will see on any given night, so planning on roughly two and a half hours is sensible.

Things that push a game past that window:

• Overtime, which adds the 3-on-3 period and possibly a shootout in the regular season.
• Lots of penalties, since each one means a stoppage and a faceoff.
• Video reviews and coach's challenges on goals.
• Injuries, broken equipment or glass that needs repair.
• Playoff overtime, which can add one or more full periods with intermissions in between.

Every major US sport stretches its game clock in the same way. If you want to compare, see our guides on how long a football game lasts, how long an NBA game takes and how long a baseball game lasts.

Regular season overtime: five minutes of 3-on-3

Under Rule 84.1, when a regular season game is tied after three periods, each team is awarded one point in the standings right away. They then play one sudden-death overtime period of up to five minutes, with three skaters and a goaltender per side. The first goal wins and earns the extra point.

That creates the NHL points system:

• Win in regulation, overtime or a shootout: 2 points.
• Lose in overtime or a shootout: 1 point.
• Lose in regulation: 0 points.

There is no real intermission before overtime. The crew shovels the whole ice surface, the players wait at their benches (they are not allowed back to the dressing room) and the period begins about two minutes after regulation ends. The teams change ends and defend the same goals they defended in the second period, which means the long change is back, and that matters a lot when there are only three skaters to cover the whole rink.

Penalties work a little differently in 3-on-3. A penalty in overtime gives the other team a 4-on-3 advantage, and a two-man advantage becomes 5-on-3. If a team pulls its goalie for an extra skater and gives up a goal, it forfeits the point it earned for the tie, unless the goalie came out during a delayed penalty call.

The format has changed several times. The NHL added a five-minute sudden-death overtime in 1983-84, moved to 4-on-4 in 1999-2000, introduced the shootout in 2005-06 and switched to 3-on-3 in 2015-16.

How the NHL shootout works

If the five minutes of 3-on-3 end with no goal, the regular season game goes to a shootout under Rule 84.4. The ice is shoveled again, and the home team chooses whether to shoot first or second. Each team gets three shooters, taking turns against the other goalie. If one side cannot catch up with the shots it has left, the shootout ends early.

If it is still tied after three rounds, the shootout goes to sudden death, one shooter per side per round. Nobody can shoot twice until every eligible player on that team has shot. Players serving a 10-minute misconduct or ejected from the game are not eligible.

The scoring quirk confuses many new fans. However many goals are scored in the shootout, the final score gives the winner exactly one more goal than the score after overtime. A hypothetical example: a game is 3-3 after overtime and the home team wins the shootout 2-1. The official final is 4-3. The shootout winner is not credited with a goal in his personal stats, and the losing goalie is not charged with one. That is also why a shootout goal never counts toward a hat trick.

Playoff overtime: full periods until someone scores

The Stanley Cup Playoffs never use a shootout. Under Rule 84.5, a tied playoff game goes to a 15-minute intermission, then the teams play 20-minute periods at full strength, five skaters a side, changing ends at the start of each overtime period. The first goal ends the game, whether it comes 10 seconds in or deep into a fourth period. If an overtime period ends scoreless, the next intermission is handled in the normal manner, and the ice gets a mid-period cleaning at the first stoppage after the 10:00 mark.

This is how playoff hockey produces its marathon nights. The longest game in NHL history, according to NHL.com, came on March 24, 1936, when Mud Bruneteau scored at 16:30 of the sixth overtime to give the Detroit Red Wings a 1-0 win over the Montreal Maroons. That was 116 minutes 30 seconds of extra time, or 176 minutes 30 seconds of hockey in total, and the goal came at 2:25 the next morning.

College and international hockey

College hockey in the US uses the same three 20-minute periods. Since the 2020-21 season, NCAA regular season games tied after regulation go to a five-minute, 3-on-3 sudden-victory overtime. In nonconference games a scoreless overtime leaves the game a tie, while conferences may use a shootout for league standings, and the details vary by conference. Conference tournaments and the NCAA tournament, including the Frozen Four, use 20-minute 5-on-5 overtime periods, much like the NHL playoffs.

International hockey under the IIHF, the sport's world governing body, uses a different ladder. In the preliminary round of a top IIHF championship, a tied game gets up to five minutes of 3-on-3 sudden death, followed by a shootout that starts with five shooters per team rather than three. Playoff, relegation and bronze medal games get a longer 10-minute 3-on-3 overtime before any shootout, and the gold medal game keeps playing sudden-death 3-on-3 overtime until someone scores.

Why the 60-minute result matters

Because overtime and shootouts are added on top of regulation, some hockey results are quoted on the 60-minute score alone. Standings tables list regulation wins (RW) and regulation plus overtime wins (ROW) as separate columns, and some hockey betting markets are settled on regulation time only. If you are curious how that works on the wagering side, our sister guide Sport Bet Time explains it. On this site, the focus stays on the rules.

Quick reference: hockey game length at a glance

Keep this handy the next time someone asks how long the game will run:

• Regulation: 3 periods x 20 minutes = 60 minutes of stop-time play.
• Intermissions: 18 minutes each in the NHL, two per regulation game.
• Typical real time for a regulation game: around two and a half hours (the two examples above ran 2:19 and 2:32).
• Regular season overtime: up to 5 minutes, 3-on-3, sudden death, about two minutes after regulation.
• Shootout: 3 rounds, then sudden death; winner gets one extra goal on the final score.
• Playoff overtime: 15-minute break, then 20-minute 5-on-5 periods until a goal.
• Points: 2 for any win, 1 for an overtime or shootout loss, 0 for a regulation loss.

New to the sport? Read up on icing and the power play next, since those two rules cause most of the stoppages you will see.