Scoreless First Period in the NHL: How Often Does It Still Go Over?

A scoreless first period is one of the most common states an NHL game can be in at the first break. Across 17,921 regular-season games, 3,311 of them (18.5%) were 0-0 after 20 minutes. The question I want answered is simple: what does that blank scoreboard tell you about the final total and about overtime?

The headline answer is that it tells you a great deal. Those games averaged 4.24 goals against 5.89 for all games, and over 5.5 landed in only 20.9% of them against 51.0% across the full sample. If you follow my free hockey picks page you will know I care about the engine room rather than the scoreboard, but here the scoreboard carries real information, and the second period carries even more.

Break 1A 0-0 first period cuts every over line sharply

This dumbbell compares the share of games going over each common line for all games and for games that were 0-0 after one. The gap is wide at every line. Over 3.5 still came in 58.5% of the time against 83.0% overall, and over 4.5 fell to 45.5% from 74.4%.

Higher up, the drop is steeper in relative terms. Over 5.5 landed in 20.9% (95% range ±1.4 points), which works out to fair over odds of 4.78, and over 6.5 came in only 13.5% against 40.1% overall.

What I take from this is that 4.5 is the line where the game flips. Under 4.5 was the outcome in 54.5% of these games, fair odds 1.83, so a scoreless first turns a usual over into something closer to a slight lean the other way. One honest caveat applies to everything here: live totals lines drop after a goalless period, so these rates describe how games finish, not whether any price on offer is good.

Break 2Second-period goals decide where the total lands

The heatmap splits the 0-0 games by how many goals arrived in the second period, then shows where the final total ended. This is where the picture sharpens. After 0-0 and a goalless second (430 games), 54.2% finished on 0-2 total goals and over 4.5 came in just 4.9%.

At the other end, 3+ goals in the second (1,033 games) produced over 5.5 in 49.6% of cases, and none of those games finished on 0-2. Two second-period goals (938 games) sat in between, with over 5.5 landing in 15.1%.

For me this is the most useful chart in the file. A scoreless first is not one state but four, and the second-intermission score separates them far more cleanly than the first break does. I would treat the first break as a warning and the second as the real checkpoint.

Break 3Scoreless firsts got rarer and higher scoring after 2017-18

The table splits the sample into two eras. In 2010-11 to 2016-17, 20.8% of games were 0-0 after one and only 15.8% of those went over 5.5. In 2017-18 to 2025-26, the share dropped to 17.0% while over 5.5 after a scoreless first rose to 24.8%, as league scoring climbed.

Over 4.5 moved the same way, from 41.0% to 49.0%, and the overtime rate eased from 29.4% to 24.3%.

The lesson is that the pooled figures blend two different leagues. If I am thinking about a modern game, the later-era row is the better anchor, and it is noticeably kinder to the over than the full sample suggests. The data also has gaps: 2014-15 is missing, and 2012-13 and 2020-21 were shortened seasons.

Break 4Overtime arrives more often after a goalless first

The bars show the share of games tied after 60 minutes. Games that were 0-0 after one reached overtime in 26.5% of cases, against 22.1% when the first period had a goal. That is a modest lift, but a consistent one across a large sample.

It makes sense mechanically: fewer goals means fewer chances for one side to pull clear, so more games stay level late.

For totals bettors this cuts both ways. Overtime and shootout winners count towards most NHL totals settlements, with a shootout counted as one goal, so a tight low-scoring game can still creep over a low line late.

Written byJoon-ho Lee

Ice hockey writer at htft.tips. Goaltending, special teams and shot quality sit at the centre of my over/under work.

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