nhl-sdk 0.1.2

unofficial SDK for the NHL API

NHL Stats SDK

An unofficial Python SDK for the NHL API. Personal side project built for fun — no guarantees on cadence, but actively maintained.

Only possible due to the great work by Zmalski documenting the NHL API. Full Postman collection for manual testing available here.

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Requirements

• Python 3.13+

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Installation

pip install nhl-sdk

Or clone the repo and install in editable mode for local development:

git clone https://github.com/PandaBacon21/nhl-sdk.git
cd nhl-sdk/nhl_sdk
pip install -e .

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Quick Start

from nhl_sdk.client import NhlClient

client = NhlClient()

# --- Players ---
player = client.players.get(8477492)   # Nathan MacKinnon — gateway object, player ID baked in

print(player.profile.first_name)       # biographical info
print(player.stats.career)             # career totals from landing
pp  = player.stats.powerplay()         # one of 20+ named api_stats reports (season, game_type optional)
log = player.stats.game_log(season=20242025, game_type=2)

print(player.achievements.awards)      # awards, badges, HHOF status, top-100
milestones = player.achievements.milestones()

# Collection-level — spotlight, stat leaders, league-wide milestones
spotlight  = client.players.spotlight
leaders    = client.players.leaders
milestones = client.players.milestones(milestone="Goals", position="s")  # skaters only

# --- Teams ---
team = client.teams.get("COL")         # Team gateway — abbreviation and team ID baked in

stats    = team.stats.get_team_stats()
summary  = team.stats.get_summary()    # api_stats aggregate (PP%, PK%, goals for/against, etc.)
roster   = team.roster.get_team_roster()
schedule = team.schedule.get_schedule()

standings = client.teams.standings.get_standings()

# --- League ---
schedule       = client.league.get_schedule(date="2025-01-15")
seasons        = client.league.get_seasons()
season_details = client.league.get_season_details()

# --- Games ---
game    = client.games.get(2024020001)  # Game gateway — game ID baked in
pbp     = game.pbp()
landing = game.landing()
shifts  = game.shifts()

scores     = client.games.scores.get_daily_scores(date="2025-01-15")
scoreboard = client.games.scoreboard.get_scoreboard()

# --- Draft ---
rankings = client.draft.rankings.get_rankings()
picks    = client.draft.picks.get_all(year=2024)
tracker  = client.draft.tracker.get_tracker_now()

# --- Playoffs ---
carousel = client.playoffs.carousel.get_carousel(season=20242025)
bracket  = client.playoffs.bracket.get_bracket(year=2024)

# --- Misc ---
meta      = client.misc.meta()
location  = client.misc.location()
countries = client.misc.countries
ping      = client.misc.ping()

# --- NHL Edge ---
# Player edge — returns SkaterEdge or GoalieEdge based on position
edge  = player.stats.edge()
speed = edge.skating_speed()

# Team edge — per-team detail
distance = team.stats.edge.skating_distance.get_skating_distance()

# Team edge — league-wide leaderboards
dist_top = client.teams.edge.skating_distance_top_10.get_top_10()

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What's Included

Namespace	What it covers
client.players	Player gateway (profile, stats, achievements), stat leaders, spotlight, league-wide milestones, player list query
client.teams	Team gateway (stats, roster, schedule), standings, all-teams reference list
client.league	League schedule, schedule calendar, season list, season details, component season
client.games	Game gateway (pbp, landing, boxscore, story, shifts), daily scores, scoreboard, TV schedule, odds, streams
client.draft	Prospect rankings, live draft tracker, picks, all-picks, draft query
client.playoffs	Series carousel, per-series schedule, full bracket
client.misc	Location, postal lookup, meta, game rail, replays, WSC play-by-play, reference data (countries, franchises, glossary, config)

Player stats — Player.stats exposes career totals, season splits, and game logs from the landing endpoint, plus 20 named per-player reports sourced from the NHL Stats API (summary, bio, faceoff, penalties, TOI, power play, penalty kill, realtime, and more). NHL Edge per-player data is available via Player.stats.edge().

Team stats — TeamStats covers per-player skater/goalie stats, aggregate team summaries (PP%, PK%, goals for/against), and team reference data. NHL Edge per-team detail is via TeamEdge and league-wide leaderboards via TeamsEdge.

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Configuration

NhlClient accepts optional keyword arguments. All fields have defaults and can be overridden individually or via a BaseConfig object.

from nhl_sdk.client import NhlClient

client = NhlClient(
    log_name="my_app",        # logger name              (default: "nhl_sdk")
    log_level="INFO",         # DEBUG|INFO|WARNING|ERROR  (default: "WARNING")
    log_file="/tmp/nhl.log",  # log file path; None = stdout only (default: None)
    lang="en",                # response language         (default: "en")
    cache=my_cache,           # custom BaseCache impl     (default: MemCache)
)

By default, logs are written to stdout only (log_file=None). Pass any file path string to write to a file instead.

Custom Config Object

from nhl_sdk.core.config import DefaultConfig
from nhl_sdk.client import NhlClient

config = DefaultConfig(log_level="WARNING", log_file=None)
client = NhlClient(config_from_object=config)

Custom Cache

Implement BaseCache to plug in any backend (Redis, file-based, etc.):

from nhl_sdk.core.cache.base_cache import BaseCache

class MyCache(BaseCache):
    def get(self, key): ...
    def set(self, key, data, ttl): ...
    def delete(self, key): ...
    def clear(self): ...

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API Reference

Full method and property documentation is in docs/api-reference.md.

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Error Handling

The NHL API is public and requires no authentication. As this is an unofficial SDK against an undocumented API, there is no guarantee that endpoints or response structures won't change, and unexpected errors outside those listed below may occur.

On HTTP 429, the SDK automatically retries up to 3 times with exponential backoff. The Retry-After response header is respected when present, capped at 60s with a minimum of 1s per retry. RateLimitError is raised only after all retries are exhausted. In practice, the NHL API returns Retry-After: 60 on rate limit and counts it down across successive 429 responses in the same window.

from nhl_sdk.core.errors import NotFoundError, RateLimitError, NhlApiError

try:
    player = client.players.get(9999999)
    _ = player.profile
except NotFoundError as e:
    print(f"Player not found: {e} (status {e.status_code})")
except RateLimitError:
    print("Rate limited — retries exhausted")
except NhlApiError as e:
    print(f"API error: {e}")

Exception	HTTP Status
NotFoundError	404
RateLimitError	429
ServerError	5xx
NhlApiError	Base class / other

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License

MIT License. See LICENSE for details.