The National Hockey League regular season runs from October to April but how many games do NHL teams play and if you want to see your favorite player play, how many times a year will they come to your city?
TABLE OF CONTENTS
– How Many Games Are There In An NHL Season?
– Regular Season Structure
– FAQ
– Has The NHL Always Had An 82-Game Regular Season?
– Length Of An NHL Season
– Length Of The NHL Playoffs
– Why Is The Regular Season Format The Way It Is?
Each team plays 82 regular season games a year in the NHL. They all have 41 home games and 41 away games.
Before the regular season starts all teams go through an exhibition schedule. Teams play around 6 games each.
After the regular season ends. 16 of the 32 NHL teams advance to the NHL playoffs where four best-of-seven rounds will commence and the winner will be the Stanley Cup champion. So, a team can play a minimum of four games in the playoffs, this happens if they get knocked out in the first round and lose every game. Or a team can play a maximum of 28 games in the post-season. A team can only achieve this if they make it to the Stanley Cup Final and every round made it to the 7th and deciding game.
In NHL history, many teams have only played four games in the playoffs, but not one team has ever played all possible 28 NHL post-season games. The 2019-2020 runner-up, Dallas Stars, were the closest team to ever achieving this mark as they played 27 playoff games.
We know about the pre-season, the regular season and the post-season in the NHL but now let’s take a closer look at which team plays who and why.
The National Hockey League is composed of 32 teams. The league is split into two conferences, comprised of 16 teams each. Within the conferences, there are two divisions comprised of 8 teams.
Each NHL team will play 26 inter-divisional matchups. Since, there are 8 teams total in each division, a particular team will play 4 games against 5 of those teams and will play 3 games against the remaining two divisional opponents.
A team will also play three games against all 8 non-divisional own-conference teams, for 24 games.
This leaves 32 regular-season games against 16 opponents who aren’t in the same division and conference. So, a team will play two games against every out-of-conference team. The chart below will help summarize:
| INTER-DIVISIONAL | SAME CONFERENCE, DIFFERENT DIVISION | DIFFERENT CONFERENCE |
|---|---|---|
| 26 games 4 games x 5 teams 3 games x 2 teams | 24 games 3 games x 8 teams | 32 games 2 games x 16 teams |
The simple answer is no it has not. The NHL’s official start was the 1917-1918 season where there were three opposing teams (the league started with four teams) and all three of them played 22 regular season games. Now there are 82 regular season games and 32 NHL teams.
Generally, as time has gone on, the number of games and teams in the league has gone up.
The National Hockey League regular season typically runs from early October to early April.
The Stanley Cup playoffs commence right after the end of the regular season so they start in April and take about two months to conclude. Usually, an NHL Stanley Cup champion is crowned at the beginning of June.
It’s the way it is for several reasons but probably the main reason is fairness. All teams in the NHL have 26 inter-divisional matchups, 24 non-divisional inter-conference matchups and 32 out-of-conference games. A birth into the playoffs is based on the team with the better regular season record at the end of the 82-game schedule and the more points you have the better chance of making it, so it’s all relative. It depends on how you stack up against the rest of the teams in your conference and your division, and the only fair way to do that is if the teams in your division face the same opponents an equal amount of times.
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