NHL for Dummies: The Hockey Beginner's Guide

Hockey is a simple game. Every team’s objective is to score more goals than their opponents. Each game has three 20-minute periods, so teams have 60 in total to beat their opposition.

Each team is allowed to have six players on the ice at a time. Typically, teams will have one goaltender, two defencemen (defenders), and three forwards (attackers). Unlike in basketball and soccer, hockey teams can make subs at any time, including while the puck is in play. As long as they don’t have more than six players on the ice, subs during live play are completely fine.

Teams can have less than six players on the ice if one of their players commits a penalty and is sent to the penalty box. This usually happens multiple times a game, so we’ll explain penalties in their own section later.

Hockey games are broken down into three 20-minute periods. This means, on paper, hockey games are 60 minutes long. However, the clock stops every time play stops. Time is essentially frozen during penalties or when the puck is out of play. There are 18-minute intermissions between periods.

This stop-time nature of the game and these intermissions means that, in reality, most games take around two and a half hours from start to finish. They can be longer if the game goes to overtime.

Overtime also affects how many points a team gets for a win. Normally, if a team wins in normal time (a.k.a., gets a regulation win), they get three points. On the other hand, teams only get two points for an overtime win. If a team loses in overtime, they get one point. No points are awarded for a regulation loss.

To win, a team needs to score more goals than their opponents. Goals are scored when the puck crosses the goal line. The puck doesn’t need to hit the back of the net, but there is a strict Goal Line Rule that says the entire puck must cross the goal line in order to count. If only part of the puck crosses the line, it won’t count as a goal.

In order to maintain parity between teams, the NHL has strict roster rules, such as its salary cap. The most important rule for casual fans is the roster size limit. Each team is allowed to have 20 players on a game-night roster. This includes 18 stakers (forwards and defencemen) and two goalies.

This may sound like a lot of players, but hockey is a very intense game with a lot of substitutions. Most players play in 45 to 60-second shifts before being subbed off. Players are often taken off in groups or lines. The best players are in the first line, while the next-best are second-line players, then third-line players, and so on.

The first two attacking lines (the six best forwards) are called a team’s Top 6 forwards. Smart coaches try to time their subs so that they can get their Top 6 forwards against the opponent’s Bottom Six defensive lines.

As we mentioned, fouls like fighting and rough play can result in players being sent to the penalty box. Specifically, players can be sent to the penalty box (also called the sin bin) for 2-minute Minor penalties and 5-minute Major penalties. A Minor ends if a goal is scored while a Major does not.

During these penalty periods, teams can have a man advantage over their opposition. For example, if a team has one man in the penalty box, the other team would have a 5-on-4 skater advantage.

When a team has an advantage, this is called a Power Play opportunity. The disadvantaged team is in a Penalty Kill situation until they regain their excluded player. You can learn more about these scenarios and other hockey terminology in our NHL glossary.

If a regular season NHL game is tied after three periods, there will be a five-minute “Sudden Death” overtime period where the first team to score wins the game. Two skaters are removed, so teams play in a 3-on-3 format to create open ice and more chances to score.

If it’s still tied after this overtime period, there will be a best of 3 shootout. Teams will pick their three best scorers, who then will each take a shot on the opposition goalie. The players from each team alternate attempts in the three-round shootout. Best of three wins.

NHL overtime rules change slightly in the playoffs. Once the playoffs start, there are no shootouts. Teams instead play in continuous 5-on-5 sudden death overtime periods. These overtime periods will be played until one team scores.

Hockey has two primary “flow-stopping” rules to ensure that the game is not just players flicking the puck from one end to the other without any real action. These rules are icing and offsides:

Icing occurs when a player shoots the puck from behind the center red line. If it crosses the opponent’s goal line without anyone touching it, it is an icing infraction. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but that’s the basics. The punishment for icing is a faceoff in the offending team's defensive zone.

Offside is called when an attacker crosses the opposition’s blue line before the puck does. This is to stop cherry-picking around the goal. If the puck leaves the attacking zone and attackers are inside it, they must exit the zone before the puck re-enters. When offside is called, there will a faceoff at the spot closest to the infraction.

The NHL has 32 teams. Each one plays 82 regular season games (41 home and 41 away). This means there are 1,312 games throughout the course of the season, which runs roughly from October to April.

After the regular season ends, the Stanley Cup Playoffs run from April through June. NHL season dates for the next season are usually announced in the summer, shortly after the end of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

The 32 NHL teams are broken down into two conferences and four divisions, with two divisions in each conference and eight teams in each division.

Each team plays 26 total games against other teams in their division, 24 games against non-divisional teams in their conference, and 32 games against teams in the other conference. Because the majority of a team’s games are against divisional and conference opponents, these matches are the most important for playoff seeding.

The top three teams in each division qualify for the playoffs. The two next-best teams in each conference qualify for the playoffs as wildcard teams.

Western Conference

Eastern Conference

Wildcards

Because wildcard teams did not finish within the top three places in their conference, they are the lowest-seeded teams in the playoffs and will be matched up against the best teams in their conferences during the first round.

Teams qualify for the NHL playoffs based on their regular season record. The three best teams in each division qualify automatically. The next-best two teams from each conference qualify as wildcards.

The NHL playoffs is structured as a 16-team bracket, broken into four rounds: the First Round, Second Round, Conference Finals, and Stanley Cup Finals. The bracket is separated into two halves, with the eight best Eastern Conference teams on one side and the eight best Western Conference teams on the other.

In each round, teams compete in best-of-seven series following a 2–2–1–1–1 format, where the higher seeded team plays the first two games at home.

The 2025-2026 NHL regular season is over. Here are the 16 teams who have qualified for the 2026 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs.

With the 2026 post-season already underway and teams like the Edmonton Oilers and Montreal Canadiens battling through the first round, the landscape is shifting daily. Stay updated on which teams are favorites to lift the Cup by checking the latest NHL playoff odds.

The NHL playoffs culminate in the Stanley Cup finals, where the two teams from the East and the West face off to determine who will be NHL champion. Like the other rounds, the Stanley Cup Final is a best-of-seven series following a 2–2–1–1–1. The team with the better regular season record has the home-ice advantage throughout the series and will play the pivotal Stanley Cup Final Game 7 at their home arena (if necessary).

With 32 teams, the NHL is one of the biggest sports leagues in North America. There is a huge geographic and cultural diversity between markets and also a quality gap between teams. Here’s an overview of some of the best NHL teams in recent history.

Representing Quebec and French Canada more broadly, the Montreal Canadiens are one of the most popular teams in the NHL. No team has won more Stanley Cup titles (24) and few have as many passionate fans. The Habs qualified for the playoffs again in 2026 and could be a team to watch out for.

If you think that South Florida is a bad place for hockey, you don’t know about the Florida Panthers will prove you wrong. They joined the NHL in 1993 and quickly earned a reputation for their raucous fans. More recently, the Panthers have been one of the most dominant teams in the NHL. They’ve made it three straight Stanley Cup Finals, and won the last two. They’re contenders again to win in 2026.

Few teams in NHL history have had as many star players as the Edmonton Oilers. The previous generation enjoyed Wayne Gretzky, while current fans root for Connor McDavid. Players like these have delivered big successes to the Oilers over the years. They’ve won 5 Stanley Cups and made it to each of the last two finals.

Vegas burst onto the scene as an expansion team in 2017 by winning the Pacific Division in their division and making a run all the way to the Stanley Cup Finals in their first season. The Knights lost that series to the Washington Capitals, but they were back in 2023 and won their first Stanley Cup title. They again won their division in 2026 and could be a team to watch in the NHL playoffs.

Colorado is a consistent Central Division powerhouse and always a team to watch once Stanley Cup brackets are set. The Avalanche have finished in the top three in the division every year since 2019 and won the Stanley Cup in 2022.

The NHL was founded in 1917, making it the second-oldest major North American sports league (behind the MLB) and the oldest major sports league in Canada.

Some teams, like the Montreal Canadiens (founded in 1909), started playing even before the NHL was founded. But, most of the teams from the early NHL era went bust. The Canadiens are the only remaining team from the first NHL season and the league itself didn’t really become stable until the 1942 season.

The teams who played in that 1942 season are called the Original Six because of their importance for establishing the NHL as a powerhouse league. The Original Six include the Canadiens, Toronto Maple Leafs, Boston Bruins, Chicago BlackHawks, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers.

The Canadiens have won the Stanley Cup a record 24 times. Collectively, the Original Six have won 64 of the 109 total Stanley Cup titles that have been awarded since 1915. These teams were the only NHL teams until the league expanded in 1967. Today, the NHL has 32 teams, with the most recent expansion team being the Utah Mammoth, who played their first season in 2024-25.

There are NHL teams with literally over a century of history between them. As a result, those teams have played each other a lot over the years and developed deep rivalries.

Competition also plays a huge role in NHL rivalries. The Bruins-Canadiens rivalry, for example, developed one of the biggest rivalries in NHL history throughout the 60s and 70s because of their dominance in the east. The Bruins and Canadiens made up 16 of the possible 30 Stanley Cup Final appearances between 1965 and 1979.

Geographical and cultural factors are the other main factors between rivals. The Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs regularly fight for bragging rights in the “Battle of Ontario,” while the Florida Panthers and Tampa Bay Lightning rivalry represents the differences between south Florida and the rest of the state.

The NHL has a hard salary cap to limit the amount of money teams can spend on player wages. All players’ salaries count as a cap hit and count towards a team’s salary cap calculations. The cap limit changes every year based on league revenue. In the 2025-26 NHL season, the NHL salary cap was US$95 million.

If a team wants to reduce their payroll to get under the cap, they can trade players with another. Teams can also do this for any other reason, such as if they want to upgrade on their forward line. However, all trades must be made before the annual trade deadline. The 2025-26 NHL trade deadline was March 6, 2026, about five weeks before the start of the NHL playoffs.

Now that you have a handle on how the league operates, the next step is finding a platform to follow the action. If you're looking to get involved, our review of the best NHL betting sites in Canada highlights the most user-friendly apps for new fans.