Schedules

This vignette covers fetching game schedules — both for a single day and for an entire season. Game IDs from schedule endpoints are what you'll pass to the Game Data endpoints.

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Daily Schedule

get_daily_schedule() returns all games on a specific date:

from slapyshot import NHLClient

client = NHLClient()
schedule = client.schedule.get_daily_schedule(2026, 3, 22)
display(schedule)

Columns returned: id, status, scheduled, home_team_id, home_team_name, home_team_alias, away_team_id, away_team_name, away_team_alias, venue_id, venue_name

Check game statuses

The status column tells you whether a game is upcoming, live, or final:

# Common status values: "scheduled", "inprogress", "closed"
display(schedule.select(["home_team_name", "away_team_name", "status"]))

Get a game ID

Game IDs are what you'll pass to the game data endpoints:

# First game of the day
game_id = schedule["id"][0]

# Or find a specific matchup
game_id = schedule.filter(
    pl.col("home_team_name") == "Utah Mammoth"
)["id"][0]

Filter by team

import polars as pl

# All games involving the Mammoth (home or away)
mammoth_games = schedule.filter(
    (pl.col("home_team_name") == "Utah Mammoth") |
    (pl.col("away_team_name") == "Utah Mammoth")
)
display(mammoth_games)

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Season Schedule

get_season_schedule() returns every game in a full season. The season_year is the starting year of the season:

# 2025-26 regular season
season = client.schedule.get_season_schedule(2025, "REG")
display(f"Total regular season games: {len(season)}")

Valid season types:

Code	Description
PRE	Preseason
REG	Regular season
PST	Postseason / playoffs

Note

season_type is case-insensitive — "reg", "REG", and "Reg" all work.

Count games per team

home_counts = (
    season
    .group_by("home_team_name")
    .agg(pl.len().alias("home_games"))
    .sort("home_games", descending=True)
)
display(home_counts)

Find all games for one team

tbl_games = season.filter(
    (pl.col("home_team_name") == "Tampa Bay Lightning") |
    (pl.col("away_team_name") == "Tampa Bay Lightning")
)
display(f"Lightning games this season: {len(tbl_games)}")

Pull all game IDs for a team

Useful if you want to loop over games and fetch boxscores or summaries:

tbl_game_ids = tbl_games["id"].to_list()

for game_id in tbl_game_ids[:5]:  # first 5 games
    boxscore = client.games.get_game_boxscore(game_id)
    display(boxscore)

Mind your rate limit

The free trial tier allows 1,000 requests per month. Looping over a full 82-game season schedule will use 82 of those. Use slices during development to avoid burning through your quota.

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Typical Workflow

graph LR
    A[get_daily_schedule] -->|game_id| B[get_game_boxscore]
    A -->|game_id| C[get_game_summary]
    A -->|game_id| D[get_game_play_by_play]
    E[get_season_schedule] -->|game_id| B