How many NHL playoff games will go to overtime?

The Stanley Cup Playoffs have arrived, which means we can throw out the three-on-three overtime because postseason hockey is back.

Playoff hockey is the best. If you’re lucky you are glued to the edge of your seat for 60 minutes, with every play seemingly becoming more and more impactful as the clock winds down in a tight game.

You can feel the tension in the air – well, I can’t feel it in the air because, for the first time in nine years, my Toronto Maple Leafs have decided to skip out on the postseason.

And I love playoff hockey, but I need the stakes to be a little but higher if I’m going to be glued to the action every night. Enter sudden-death overtime.

The stakes of overtime hockey expose you to a new part of that front edge of the seat (insert joke about Bono) that you never knew existed.

Every shot put towards the net feels like life or death, and we often we see a team dominate in the extra frame only to lose on an odd-man rush going the other way.

Twenty games reached overtime last postseason, up from 16 in 2024.

Since the 2005 lockout, there has only been one NHL postseason with fewer than 15 overtimes.

How many NHL playoff games will go to overtime?

FanDuel has a market set for the total number of overtime games in the NHL playoffs this season with the range of 16-20 sitting at -125 with the best odds. That number comes with an implied probability of 55.56 per cent.

The 11-15 (+210) and 21-25 (+380) ranges are the only options priced shorter than 11-1.