A hockey shootout is a one-on-one skills competition between shooters and a goalie, used to break a tie after overtime. Each team sends players on breakaway attempts, and the team that scores more goals wins the game. The NHL introduced the shootout for the 2005-06 season, eliminating tie games from the league for the first time. The format is simple to follow once you understand the structure.
The Basic Format
After overtime ends with the score still tied, each team selects three shooters. The teams alternate shots, with one skater at a time starting from center ice, skating toward the opposing goalie, and attempting to score. There is no time limit on an individual attempt, but the shooter must keep moving forward toward the net. Once the puck stops moving, crosses the goal line, or the goalie controls it, the attempt is over.
A coin toss or referee decision determines which team shoots first. The home team typically gets to choose whether they want to shoot first or second. After all three rounds, the team with more goals wins. If it’s still tied after three rounds, the shootout moves to sudden death: teams continue sending one shooter each, round by round, until one team scores and the other doesn’t. Any skater who was on the roster and not in the penalty box at the end of overtime is eligible to shoot.
Who Can Shoot and How Many Times
In the NHL, every eligible skater on the bench must take a turn before any player can shoot a second time. This means a team with 18 skaters available would need to cycle through all 18 before repeating anyone. In practice, most shootouts end well before that happens, but the rule prevents coaches from simply sending their best scorer out every round.
International rules work differently. The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), which governs the Olympics and World Championships, starts with five shooters per team instead of three. If the score is still tied after those five rounds, the shootout enters its own sudden-death phase. Here’s the key difference: in IIHF sudden death, the same player can be used for each shot. So a coach could theoretically send the same elite scorer out every round until someone breaks the tie.
What Shooters Are Allowed to Do
The shooter picks up the puck at center ice and skates toward the goal. They can deke, change speeds, and use any legal stick move to try to beat the goalie. The puck must continuously move toward the goal line, meaning the shooter can’t stop skating, turn back, or circle around for a second approach. If the puck bounces off the post or crossbar and comes back toward the shooter, the play is dead.
Spin moves are legal as long as the shooter’s overall momentum carries them toward the net. Shooters commonly use wrist shots, backhands, and forehand-to-backhand dekes. The whole attempt usually lasts about five to eight seconds.
What the Goalie Can Do
The goalie starts on or near the goal line and can come out to challenge the shooter, cutting down the angle. Goalies are free to move however they want within the crease and beyond it. They just can’t throw their stick or deliberately dislodge the net.
Goalies have a significant advantage in shootouts. The all-time NHL shootout save percentage sits around .678, meaning goalies stop roughly two out of every three attempts. Put another way, shooters only convert about 32% of the time. That success rate is lower than many fans expect, which reflects how difficult it is to beat an NHL goalie one-on-one with no screens, rebounds, or passing options.
How It Affects the Standings
In the NHL, a shootout win counts as a regular win in the standings and awards the winning team two points. The losing team still earns one point for making it past regulation, just as they would for an overtime loss. This is why the standings show an “OTL” (overtime loss) column. There is no distinction in the standings between losing in overtime and losing in the shootout.
This point structure means that a game going to a shootout produces three total standings points (two for the winner, one for the loser) instead of the two points available in a regulation result. That imbalance has been a source of debate among hockey analysts for years, since teams in tight divisions can accumulate “loser points” that affect playoff races.
Ice Conditions and Preparation
Before the shootout begins, the ice crew typically clears the crease areas in front of both nets. Full ice resurfacing between overtime and the shootout is not standard in most leagues. The Ontario Hockey League recently made news by eliminating even the resurfacing machine from the pre-shootout break, opting instead for a quick manual scrape of the crease by the ice crew. The NHL follows a similar approach: a brief cleanup rather than a full resurface, keeping the break short and the arena energy high.
Ice quality matters. By the time a shootout starts, the game is well past 60 minutes of regulation and at least five minutes of overtime. The ice surface is chewed up, which can cause the puck to bounce unpredictably. Shooters who rely on smooth stickhandling sometimes adjust their approach on rougher ice, favoring quicker releases over elaborate dekes.
Shootouts vs. Playoff Overtime
Shootouts only exist in the regular season. In the NHL playoffs, tied games are settled by continuous sudden-death overtime periods, each lasting 20 minutes, until someone scores. There is no shootout in postseason hockey. The same applies to IIHF elimination rounds at the Olympics and World Championships, though those tournaments do use shootouts during preliminary round games.
This distinction exists because the league considers a full-team overtime goal a more legitimate way to decide high-stakes games. The shootout, by design, is a skills competition that isolates one shooter against one goalie, removing the team elements of passing, forechecking, and defensive structure. It’s effective for resolving regular-season games efficiently, but the hockey world has broadly agreed that playoff games deserve a different standard.