The NHL Bench Grew From Eight Skaters a Night to 18 in Jumps

Ottawa won the Cup with nine men

Nine was a full roster then. Six Senators, Clancy among them, are listed in the official records as playing all 24 regular-season games. Eddie Gerard missed one, Frank Nighbor two, and Lionel Hitchman played three. Add up their games, divide by the schedule, and Ottawa dressed 8.0 skaters a night. In the whole history of the league, only the 1921-22 Hamilton Tigers (7-17-0, in wins, losses and ties) also got through a full schedule with nine. Four years earlier, in 1918-19, four Senators had played every game: Cy Denneny, Eddie Gerard, Sprague Cleghorn and Frank Nighbor.

The Clancy legend grew from there. NHL.com says he played every position during a Stanley Cup playoff game, “the only time it has ever been done.” The historian Eric Zweig went back to the Ottawa Journal. Clancy “played every position on the ice during the 1923 Stanley Cup playoffs,” Zweig wrote, but “he did NOT do so in one single game.”

The Journal’s game report of April 2, 1923, as Zweig reads it, has Clancy and Hitchman subbing on defence, “with Harry Helman taking a few turns relieving the forwards.” A column by Basil O’Meara in the same day’s Journal said Clancy “went in and played goal and tried his hand at every other position on the team.” Zweig ends “not quite as sure as I once was.”

The whole league ran that lean. Add up every skater’s games in an NHL season, divide by the games each team played, and you get how many skaters a team used on an average night. We did that for every season since 1917-18. In 1917-18 the answer was about eight. Five skaters were on the ice at a time, plus the goalie (the National Hockey Association, the NHL’s forerunner, went to six a side, goalie included, in 1911-12). About three more sat on the bench to give them a rest. The count passed 10 in 1926-27 and reached 15.6 in 1949-50. It has been almost exactly 18 in every season since 1982-83. Goalies are counted separately and are not in these numbers. Since 2017-18 we can check this count against box scores, and it matches almost exactly. The early decades are rougher, because the record keeping then was patchier.

Two of the jumps on the way up came in the same season as a published change in the dress limit. A few more line up with an unsigned table of limits, which we come to below. Others, like the climb back after the Second World War, came with no limit change on any list. In some seasons the busiest teams dressed exactly as many skaters as that table allowed. In others they stayed well under.

Most of the climb came in a few bursts. The fastest ran from 1928-29, at about 10 a game, to 1931-32, at about 13. During the Second World War the count dipped to about 12 in 1943-44, the fewest since 1929-30. By 1946-47 it was back to about 15. From 1949-50 to 1969-70 it stayed between about 15 and 16. From 1970-71 to 1981-82 it sat a step higher, between about 16 and 17. In 1982-83 it jumped to almost 18.

For years the counts ran past the published limits

If the published rules set the size of the bench, the counts should never run past them. They do, for years at a time. The last skater limit the rule history gives is 15 plus goalies, set in 1951-52. Yet the league averaged more than 15 skaters a game in every one of the 14 seasons from 1953-54 to 1966-67. In 1959-60 it reached about 16. It happened earlier too. In 1931-32 teams averaged 13.0 skaters a game against the limit of 12 set in 1928-29. In 1938-39 they averaged 14.2 against the 14 in uniform set in 1932-33. For 1982-83, when the count jumped to almost 18, the rule history lists no change at all.

A team can’t dress more skaters than the rules allow, so something in the record is wrong. Either the old records list some players in games they never dressed for, or the rule history is missing changes. Only two of its limits clearly show up in the count: 17 in 1949-50 and 15 in 1951-52.

A season-by-season table on a hockey-history website, adjustedhockey.com, points to missing changes. Nobody signed it. It cites the stats site Hockey-Reference in general and gives no source for each season. In it the limit moves far more often: 15 for 1929-30 to 1931-32, 15 again for 1938-39 to 1941-42, 16 for 1953-54, 17 from 1954-55 to 1959-60, 16 from 1960-61 to 1970-71, 17 from 1971-72, and 18 from 1982-83. One season had two limits. In 1952-53, the table says, teams could dress “16 skaters at home and 15 on the road.”

Put the website’s dates next to the counts. In 1931-32, 1938-39 and every season from 1953-54 to 1966-67, the league ran past the rule history’s limit and still came in under the website’s. The 13.0 skaters of 1931-32 sit under its 15. The 16.1 of 1959-60 sit under its 17. For those seasons the website’s dates fit the bench. The late 1940s and 1970-71 are another matter, and we come to them below. We still can’t say who made the table or where each number came from.

The jump to 18 probably came with a new limit too

The table’s last step is the 1982-83 jump to 18, and one team fits it to the skater. That September the Washington Capitals traded Ryan Walter and Rick Green to Montreal for Rod Langway, Craig Laughlin, Doug Jarvis and Brian Engblom. After that, none of their skaters played for another NHL team all season, which means they can be counted exactly. The league’s season records list each player once, with one total of games. For a traded player, that total can’t be split between his teams. But when nobody on a team played anywhere else, every game in every total belongs to that team.

So add them up. In all, 26 skaters shared the work for Washington, and their games come to 1,440 over 80 games: exactly 18 a night. Every seat was filled in the first season the website’s table allows 18. Five Capitals played all 80 games (Bobby Gould, Rod Langway, Doug Jarvis, Dennis Maruk and Bobby Carpenter). The team went 39-25-16 and made the playoffs for the first time, and Langway won the Norris Trophy as the best defenceman.

More players per night, many more per season

Washington needed 26 skaters over that season to fill 18 seats a night. Across the century, the number of skaters a team goes through in a season has grown faster than the number it dresses on a night. Count every skater who played for a team at any point in a season (a traded player counts once for each team): from 1917-18 to 1923-24 a team used about 11 skaters in a season; from 2015-16 to 2025-26 it used about 32. The core grew far less. Skaters who played at least 90% of the schedule, nearly every game, went from about 6 a team to about 10.

On the chart the top line roughly triples, and the bottom one grows far less. The war years pull them apart. In 1943-44 teams used the fewest skaters a game since 1929-30 (about 12) but the most different skaters over a whole season up to then (24 a team), and only about 7 a team played 90% of the schedule, the fewest since 1923-24. The New York Rangers went 6-39-5 and used 32 skaters, and Detroit used 31. Montreal went 38-5-7 with 16, none of whom played for another team. The season totals don’t say why.

The record for one team in one season belongs to the 1991-92 Boston Bruins, who used 51. Fifteen of the players who skated only for Boston that season played 10 games or fewer.

The 60-minute player was gone before anyone timed him

Gardiner’s “every minute” was never timed, and for decades nobody else’s was either. The NHL’s ice-time records begin in 1997-98, so nobody can say from them when the last full-game skater played. They do show he was gone by then. In every season since, the league leader in ice time per game has been a defenceman, averaging between 25:53 and 29:25. That is under half of a 60-minute game. The top mark, 29:25, was Ryan Suter’s in 2013-14. (The fourth-line story covers how the rest of the lineup’s minutes moved.)

The single biggest night came near the end of a lost season. On April 8, 2023, the Anaheim Ducks played at Arizona with five defencemen dressed. Cam Fowler played 38:54. Guinness World Records lists it as the NHL record: “The National Hockey League (NHL) record for most time on ice in a regular season game is 38 minutes 54 seconds.” Matias Maccelli tied the game for Arizona “with 36 seconds left,” ESPN’s recap says, and Barrett Hayton won it “at four minutes of overtime.” It was “the Ducks’ 10th loss in a row.”

Even that night, Fowler was off the ice for about 25 of the game’s 64 minutes. The next-biggest night in our box scores is Thomas Chabot’s 37:50 for Ottawa at Tampa Bay on Dec. 17, 2019, also an overtime loss, 4-3.

Eighteen skaters, nearly every night

The bench, meanwhile, is full nearly every night. From 2017-18 to 2025-26 we have box scores for 22,104 team games (a game between two teams counts once for each of them). A team dressed fewer than 18 skaters in about one of every 316 of them, roughly once every four seasons for a given team. In practice those short nights bunch up: all 70 fell in just 36 team seasons.

In those games, a team’s busiest skater played about 25 minutes a night, and that barely changed from season to season. Only 412 of those team games, about 2 in 100, had a skater play 30 minutes. The top of that list, overtime included, is still Cam Fowler’s 38:54 in 2022-23.

A full bench hasn’t spread the work evenly, either. Take all the minutes a team’s skaters played in a game. The top five played about 37 of every 100 of them. If all 18 had split the time evenly, five would have played about 28. Our box scores only go back to 2017-18, and the top five’s share has stayed at about 37 of every 100 minutes in every season since.

No team in any season since 2017-18 came up short more often than the 2020-21 Vegas Golden Knights, who dressed fewer than 18 skaters 10 times. On April 1, 2021, Vegas played Minnesota with 16 and lost in a shootout.

Vegas dressed fifteen

Later that season Vegas went lower still. On May 10, 2021, the Golden Knights played Colorado with ten forwards and five defencemen. “Due to salary cap restrictions and injuries,” Marisa Ingemi wrote for NBC Sports, Vegas was “dressing just 10 forwards and five defensemen.” They had played with 17 for three games. Peyton Krebs had a broken jaw, and because of how much his contract counted against the salary cap (the league’s limit on what a team can spend on players), the team “couldn’t play an additional skater.” As Ingemi put it, “playing with 15 skaters is almost unheard of.” It is the only team game since 2017-18 with fewer than 16.

Shea Theodore played 29:34. At home, with fifteen skaters dressed, the Golden Knights lost 2-1. Fifteen skaters was the whole limit in 1951-52. It was almost twice the eight a night that Ottawa used the year Clancy filled in for everyone.

Show the work

Tests written down

Not in advance (exploratory)

Results computed

October 27, 2026

Every skater’s games played in every NHL regular season from 1917-18 to 2025-26 (NHL stats API), divided by team games (less the two defaulted 1917-18 Montreal Wanderers games). Rule dates in the rules table are only those we found in a published rule history. Team-level counts use the same season totals: skaters used by one team (a traded player counts for each team), and, for teams that traded no skater during the season, the exact skaters dressed per game (their skaters’ games ÷ team games). Those exact counts are compared with the season limits in adjustedhockey.com’s table (a secondary source with no row-by-row citations; 1925-26 to 2020-21). For teams with traded players, the single-team skaters alone give a lower bound, and a team counts as over the table if even that lower bound is above it. Per-game minutes, dressed counts, defencemen dressed and game length (last play-by-play event) use NHL box scores and play-by-play from 2017-18 to 2025-26. The comparison with the secondary table was done after the memo found it, so it is a check, not a pre-registered test. Exact figures behind the body’s rounded ones: skaters per team game 7.96 in 1917-18; between 17.88 and 18.00 in every season since 1982-83; 10.22 in 1928-29 and 13.04 in 1931-32; 12.23 in 1943-44; 14.58 in 1946-47; 14.69 to 16.08 from 1949-50 to 1969-70; 16.23 to 16.95 from 1970-71 to 1981-82.

Continues below

The 1949-50 step was +0.71 and the 1951-52 step −1.01. Skaters used per team in a season: 11.0 (1917-18 to 1923-24) and 32.0 (2015-16 to 2025-26); playing 90% of the schedule, 5.7 and 9.5. In 1943-44: 24.0 used per team, 6.5 playing 90%. Busiest skater per team game, 2017-18 to 2025-26: 24.73 to 25.06 minutes by season; 412 team games (1.9%) had a 30-minute skater; top five skaters’ share 36.7% to 37.1% against 27.8% if even. How solid the count is. An independent modern check: from 2017-18 to 2025-26 we counted the skaters listed in every team’s box score; the average matches the games-played count to within 0.002 skaters a game in every season. The same series elsewhere: the skaters-per-game figures match the league table used in our NHL GOAT series to four decimal places in every season but 1917-18, where we leave out two defaulted games (forfeits after the Wanderers folded) that the season totals count as played. Both come from the NHL’s season totals, so this checks the arithmetic, not the records. The teams with no trades: for the 156 team-seasons from 1925-26 to 2020-21 in which a team traded no skaters, its skaters’ games divided by its games is an exact count; of those, 14 sit above the secondary table’s limit, all before 1971-72.

Continues below

Early credits are the weak point: before box scores, a games-played credit could mean a player dressed or a player took a shift, and the record keeping of the 1910s and 1920s has gaps (the 1917-18 team totals count two Montreal Wanderers forfeits as games played; we take them out). Read the early line as an approximate count. Short seasons are rates: 1994-95, 2012-13, 2019-20 and 2020-21 were cut short, so their per-game numbers compare, but the season totals of players used do not. What this cannot tell us. The only limit list with every season is an anonymous secondary table, and the rule history we could check lists no skater limit after 1951-52, including the step to 18 in 1982-83. Our no-trade check fits that table from 1949-50 to 1959-60 and from 1971-72 on, but 14 team-seasons and the whole league in 1946-47, 1947-48, 1948-49 and 1970-71 sit above it, so either the table is wrong for those years or the games-played credits count players who never dressed. The exact check covers only no-trade teams, from none to 6 a season. Ice time starts in 1997-98 and our box scores in 2017-18, so Gardiner’s “every minute” is reported, never timed, and Clancy’s night in goal rests on accounts that disagree. Why teams use more players over a season (injuries, call-ups, trades, war) is not in this data, and we did not check why any modern team dressed fewer than 18.

Continues below

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• NHL line combinations today →Who is on which line and power-play unit tonight.

Sources and method

1. NHL stats (NHL.com), every season since 1917-18
2. NHL stats API: skater and goalie games played, team games, skater time on ice
3. Scouting the Refs: NHL historical rule changes
4. adjustedhockey.com: #4. Roster Size (season-by-season limit table; anonymous, secondary)
5. NHL Rule 5.1 (2013-14 rulebook): no more than 18 skaters and 2 goalies
6. NHL.com, Stu Hackel: King Clancy, 100 Greatest NHL Players (Jan. 1, 2017)
7. Eric Zweig: Hockey Nerd in Canada, Part I (Dec. 8, 2014; the Clancy legend and the Ottawa Journal)
8. Hockey-Reference: King Clancy (born Feb. 25, 1903)
9. Manitoba Hockey Hall of Fame: Herb Gardiner
10. Hockey-Reference: Hart Trophy winners (Gardiner, 1926-27)
11. Russian Machine Never Breaks, Madeline Dement: the Rod Langway trade, 35 years on (Sept. 9, 2017)
12. Hockey-Reference: Norris Trophy winners (Langway, 1982-83)
13. Guinness World Records: Most time on ice, NHL regular season game
14. ESPN recap: Ducks at Coyotes, April 8, 2023
15. NBC Sports, Marisa Ingemi: Golden Knights will play shorthanded against Avalanche (May 10, 2021)

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