Hockey scoreboard overlay with penalty clocks and power plays

Hockey has been in ScoreLayer since August without much fanfare. It had two overlay styles, team timeouts and a Power Play button, and that button was the weak spot. On a hockey broadcast the power play is a clock. It tells the viewer who has the extra skater and for how long, and it changes the moment a goal goes in or a player steps out of the box. A label that says POWER PLAY until somebody remembers to switch it off is a guess, and the operator usually has better things to do in the last minute of a penalty than babysit it.

So before writing about hockey, we rebuilt the part a hockey viewer looks at most. ScoreLayer now handles hockey penalties the way the rink scoreboard does: they run off the game clock, and the power play is worked out from who is sitting in the box.

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Penalties that follow the game clock

Every hockey penalty is served in game time. When the referee whistles play dead the penalty stops too, and when a period ends with time still on it, the rest carries over into the next period.

The control panel has three buttons per team: +2:00 for a minor, +4:00 for a double minor and +5:00 for a major. Tap one as the player skates to the box and the penalty starts counting down alongside the game clock. You never start or pause it separately. Stop the clock for an icing and the penalty waits with it. If you notice your game clock is two seconds off the rink's and fix it, every penalty moves with the correction.

Carry-over works the same way. A minor called with 1:10 left in the second period comes out of the intermission with 0:50 to serve and starts ticking again when you start the third. When a penalty runs out it leaves the board on its own, so there is nothing to clear while the puck is still moving.

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Each running penalty has −10s and +10s buttons for the times the rink's penalty clock and yours disagree, and a Clear button for a penalty entered against the wrong team. Every penalty you start is also added to that team's penalty tally, which the Scorebug style shows along the bottom as PEN 3–1.

The power play, worked out for you

You no longer tell ScoreLayer who has the power play. It counts the players in the box and shows the result.

With one penalty against the away team, the bug puts the home team on the power play with the time left on it: BOS PP 1:42, using the first three letters of the team name. When a second penalty goes against the same side, the strength appears as well, so the tag reads BOS PP 5 ON 3 0:58 and the time counts down to the moment the first player returns. If both teams have someone in the box at once, coincidental minors cancel out and the bug shows 4 ON 4 with the time until a player comes back.

The control panel shows the same line above the penalty buttons, for example Home power play · 5 ON 4 · 1:42. You can check what viewers are seeing without looking away to the preview.

A power-play goal ends the penalty

This is the rule that made the old button go stale. When the team with the extra skater scores, the shorthanded team's minor penalty ends and the player comes back on the ice.

ScoreLayer applies that as part of the goal. Tap +1 for the team on the power play and the minor with the least time left comes off the board in the same update, so the overlay goes back to even strength as the goal lands.

The less common cases follow the rulebook too:

• Double minor. A goal in the first two minutes of a four-minute penalty only ends the first minor. The penalty drops to 2:00 and keeps counting, and a second goal ends it.
• Major. Five minutes are served in full whatever happens on the ice.
• Shorthanded goals and 4-on-4. Nobody is released, because neither of those is a power-play goal.

If your goals come from a Stream Deck, the same thing happens there. A hockey_goal sent through the push API ends the minor exactly as a tap in the control panel does. The Stream Deck post covers setting that up.

Empty net

Pulling the goalie in the last two minutes is the most tense stretch of a close game, and a viewer who has just joined the stream can easily miss it. The new Empty Net card has one button per team. Tap Home goalie pulled and the bug adds EMPTY NET with that team's code, next to the power-play tag if there is one. Tap it again when the goalie is back in the crease.

Youth periods and playoff overtime

Hockey always has three periods. How long they last depends on who is playing. NHL and IIHF games use 20 minutes, while USA Hockey youth games are shorter: three 15-minute periods at 12U and three 16-minute periods at 14U, and plenty of leagues and tournaments set their own lengths.

The Setup section now has a Game Clock card with a period length and an overtime length. Set them once before puck drop, and every period button and the clock's Reset button start from them. Quick picks cover the formats people ask about most:

• Pro / IIHF group stage: 20-minute periods, 5-minute overtime
• Playoffs: 20-minute periods, 20-minute overtime
• IIHF knockout: 20-minute periods, 10-minute overtime
• Youth: 15-minute periods, 5-minute overtime

Overtime is where competitions differ most. In the IIHF format, group-stage games play five minutes of 3-on-3 and then a shootout, knockout games play ten minutes, and the gold medal game plays twenty. North American playoff hockey keeps playing full 20-minute periods until somebody scores. The period selector now has OT, 2OT and 3OT next to SO, so a game that goes to triple overtime reads correctly on air. A penalty that carries over from the third into overtime picks up with the right time, using the overtime length you set.

Timeouts

Each team gets one 30-second timeout, as in the NHL and IIHF rulebooks. Call Timeout stops the game clock and puts a timeout clock on the overlay. When it runs out, the game clock starts again by itself, and any penalties pick up with it. If the officials give a timeout extra time, the timeout clock has its own −10s and +10s buttons.

Two styles

Scorebug sits in the bottom-left corner. It is a compact steel-grey panel with a thin team-colour stripe on each row, the period and game clock across the top, and the power play, timeout or empty net at the right of that strip. Timeout pips and the penalty tally run along the bottom.

Broadcast Bar sits at the bottom centre. The team colours fill a panel on each side, the period and clock sit in a round puck badge on top, and the power play or timeout shows as an amber tag underneath.

Both styles show a pregame countdown if you set one, pull logos and colours from your team setup, and run on every plan, including free.

Try it

Setup is the same as any other sport in ScoreLayer. Create a hockey scoreboard, open the control panel, and add the overlay URL to OBS, vMix or Streamlabs as a browser source. If you have not done that before, the OBS setup guide walks through it.

The hockey sport page shows what each style looks like and how the controls are laid out, and the scoreboard gallery has both styles rendered live in the middle of a power play.

If your league plays a format the Game Clock card does not cover, or you would like to see shots on goal or a shootout tracker on the bug, or if there is anything else you're missing, let us know on the support page.

Create a hockey scoreboard →