NHL Live Streams and Schedule

The 2026-27 NHL season

This is the first NHL season with an 84-game schedule; until 2025-26 teams played 82. The regular season opened on September 29, 2026 and is due to end around April 10, 2027, which means there is a full slate most nights from the first week of October. The league's 32 teams are split into two conferences of two divisions each: the Atlantic and Metropolitan in the East, the Central and Pacific in the West.

Standings work on points. A win is worth two, a defeat that comes after regulation is worth one, and a regulation defeat is worth nothing. A regular-season game that is level after 60 minutes goes to five minutes of three-on-three overtime, and if nobody scores, a shootout decides it. That is why some rows on the board show a final score with OT or SO beside it.

How the playoffs are decided

Sixteen teams qualify, eight from each conference. The first three in each division are in, and the two best of the remaining teams in each conference take the wild-card places. All four rounds are best of seven. Playoff overtime is different from the regular season. Extra 20-minute periods are added, still with five skaters a side, until a goal ends it, so a playoff game can run well past its usual finish time. The league's season dates run to June 10, 2027, which is the latest the Stanley Cup Final is expected to finish.

Reading the hockey schedule

Most weeknight games start at 7:00 or 7:30 in the evening local time in the Eastern time zone, with Central, Mountain and Pacific games following later. In UTC, a busy night runs from about 23:00 to 03:00. Because the page shows every start on your own clock, a reader in the UK or Europe will see most games dated the following morning, and a reader in Australia will see them in the middle of their day.

Saturday is the biggest night of the week and often has afternoon games as well. Some days have only two or three games, especially early in the week. The board lists every game the league has scheduled for the next seven days, grouped by day, so a quiet Monday is easy to tell apart from a page that has failed to load.

The NHL page is also where other hockey turns up when it is listed, such as the AHL or European leagues. Those games sit under their own league headings beneath the NHL block.

What you get on a hockey game page

The header of a game page shows both team logos with their records, the puck drop time on your clock and the arena. During play it updates the score and the period about once a minute. Below that is the list of feeds for the game. The Main row, when there is one, is the feed we chose for that game and sits at the top. The other rows are named channels, each with a mirror number, and each one opens the player in a new tab.

Under the feeds there is an "Also on" list of other hockey games on the same day, which is handy on a Saturday when you want to switch to a game going into overtime. When the listings include it, the page also shows recent form for both teams and details about the arena.

Practical notes

Hockey games are short on breaks compared with American football, so the first few minutes are easy to miss. Open the game page around puck drop rather than at the scheduled start of the broadcast, because the feed list tends to fill out in the minutes just before the first faceoff. If one channel lags behind another by a minute or two, that is normal; different feeds come from different broadcasts.

Outdoor games are part of most NHL seasons, and they are listed like any other game. Weather can delay them, and the broadcast often starts early with extra build-up, so the time on the row may be a little ahead of the opening faceoff. Preseason games, which ran in September this year, also use this page when they are on.

Our NHL 2026-27 season guide covers the 84-game change, the division format and overtime rules in more detail. Basketball fans can check the NBA page, which shares most of the same winter nights.