Faceoff is a TUI app written in Python to follow live NHL games and browse standings and stats. I got the inspiration from Playball, a similar TUI app for MLB games that was featured on HN.
The app was mostly vibe-coded with Claude Code, but not one-shot. I added features and fixed bugs by using it, as I spent way too much time in the terminal over the last few months.
Try it out with `uvx faceoff` (requires uv).
divbzero11 days ago
Related:
Playball – Watch MLB games from a terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45451577 - Oct 2025 (146 comments)
Playball: Watch MLB games from the comfort of your own terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37591070 - Sept 2023 (1 comment)
Playball: Watch MLB games from the comfort of your own terminal - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21653981 - Nov 2019 (42 comments)
j4511 days ago
Different sport though, but neat visualizations.
yuppiepuppie11 days ago
Nice! I was thinking about doing something like this but for cycling, however one of the biggest PIA about building products for sports is all the gating of data.
Does the NHL really provide an API for all games? That's nice...
stackskipton11 days ago
Officially no, but there is undocumented API (if you are commercial, they provide documentation and support) that is public without authentication.
redanddead10 days ago
the more I think about it, the more it's actually so weird that the leagues don't have APIs
Shalomboy10 days ago
The request definitely comes from the leagues' broadcast partners, right? They would want as many eyeballs concentrated in as few places as possible so they can sell ads for more.
vcfop11 days ago
I had the same thought, went ahead when I found an existing Python module to access the API.
freedomben11 days ago
Nice, I've now created dozens of little personal tools like this now :-)
This is IMHO the killer AI feature for personal use. So many utlities I never would have spent time on are now within reach. Even just non-trivial bashrc aliases and functions
vcfop11 days ago
Yeah, I completely agree. It's awesome to be able to build anything you want (as long as it's not too complex). I, too, have at least a dozen, and I usually don't share, but with the playoffs starting, I felt others could enjoy this one.
zawakin11 days ago
Same — similar pile accumulating, and GitHub has fallen way behind. I keep going back and forth on whether a monorepo is the right answer or if it'd just make the sprawl more legible without actually helping. How are you organizing yours?
vcfop11 days ago
One repo per project. It makes it easier when I want to share or make public. I have 100+ repos in my account and I don’t find that cumbersome.
nullsanity11 days ago
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embedding-shape11 days ago
> It's awesome to be able to build anything you want (as long as it's not too complex).
That's the thing. It was always awesome, as long as it wasn't too complex. The only thing that changed for me what was "too complex".
cr125rider11 days ago
Super fun! Nice job shipping!
duncangh10 days ago
I love this - watching the hurricanes game right now! Autorefresh would be nice and then it looks like a small bug in the faceoff percentage as they both say 100% which shouldn't be possible at any point in the game. Also would be sick to be able to enter the team and roster detail page from within the game detail page. But I love this so much and appreciate you for building it :D
edit the face off percentage is still a little off it's updated to show this 87% - 67%. Also followed you on twitter and github.
vcfop9 days ago
Thanks! I will look into these bugs, it’s a PIA because you can only debug those while there is a live game… Same with auto-refresh, it should work but for some reason it’s inconsistent.
mooktakim11 days ago
It's like the reinvention of Teletext
forestingfisher10 days ago
I think a teletext-like central information service for terminals would see use, because sometimes you just want to check the weather and news without being spammed with a billion ads and JavaScript
LeoPanthera10 days ago
Which still exists in many European countries.
captn3m011 days ago
Link to the API Client is incorrect at the bottom: https://github.com/nhl-stats-api-client instead of https://github.com/liahimratman/nhl-api-client
vcfop11 days ago
Thanks, fixed!
mallahan11 days ago
This is great. I recently asked AI how many software devs played hockey. It estimated 25k - 50k globally. It also called it a 'prestige sport' which never occurred to me (what with all the guys with missing teeth). But the cost of playing is getting significant. Still the most fun sport to play and watch.
Thanks for this - TUI is awesome.
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lucy_hnatchuk7 days ago
Sweet NHL TUI, Vincent! Live scores + standings in terminal? Hockey nerd's dream. Textual + NHL API = perfection. Installed via uvx—game on!
ipaddr11 days ago
Do the endpoints still work?
Keeping upto date endpoints for sport scores is the most difficult challenge.
vcfop11 days ago
I took the lazy way out and use a dependency for that. I’ll look into it and see if I can either push a fix upstream or reimplement myself.
jlongman11 days ago
nIce! Does it have player in-game stats like TOI and +/-?
This reminds me of that f1 tui… https://github.com/JustAman62/undercut-f1 or https://github.com/IAmTomShaw/f1-race-replay. The one I’m thinking of syncs with kodi for delayed playback “live” stats.
vcfop11 days ago
Not player stats, only team stats. I'll have to see if player-level stats are available in the API.
scarface749 days ago
I just looked at it. It’s kind of interesting.
It’s the type of thing that I have thought about. But wouldn’t have done before AI.
roxana_haidiner9 days ago
It looks interesting, but you can create this with any database, like mysql and create relations between tables, right?
cyberax11 days ago
What next? Perhaps a small scripting language to run on the side of the terminal?
You know, just to make some simple automations possible, nothing super-special.
paolatauru9 days ago
curious how you handle the NHL feed latency. the undocumented API can be anywhere from 30s to 2 minutes behind the ice. do you poll on a fixed interval or do something smarter to keep it snappy
embedding-shape11 days ago
> Acknowledgments - This project was inspired by Playball, a similar terminal application for following MLB baseball games.
Should've gone for something generalized that could handle a bunch of different games, instead of just another sport, so someone caring about multiple sports don't need multiple TUIs :)
bpev11 days ago
not terminal, but fwiw: https://plaintextsports.com
prh811 days ago
Having long ago built an app that does gamecasts for multiple sports, similar to what you get from ESPN, every sport is completely different. There's almost nothing that matches up, except for the very basic concept of a box score. Even play by play has enough differences to be vastly different
embedding-shape11 days ago
I never once built an app for gamecasts, any sport, but even I do realize that sports are different... Not sure what made you(s) believe I'm suggesting the exact same UI for all the sports.
vcfop11 days ago
Different sports have different ways to present the data. But most importantly, the data availability differs a lot between leagues, so there’s a benefit to having separate tools. I, for one, would not want to maintain an app for all sports.
rangersny111 days ago
Nice! In practice, how far behind the TV broadcast does it end up being?
vcfop11 days ago
Not too much, but it’s using a Rest API, so it also depends on the refresh rate (default 30 seconds, configurable with cli argument).
brewdad11 days ago
That’s not bad. One of my favorite times is college football season with a big game on say, ABC. You quickly learn who it watching OTA, who is watching on cable and who has YoutubeTV based on the different reaction times after a big play.
dionian11 days ago
Not a hockey fan but i absolutely love this
worldsavior10 days ago
NHL? What are we, Canadians?
james-clef11 days ago
Wicked. Who is your team?
vcfop11 days ago
Go Habs Go!
bradley_taunt11 days ago
Booooo!
(From a Senators fan…)
testiam7 days ago
it's super cool
itsnh9811 days ago
Go Habs!
j4511 days ago
The missing interface from sports.
_doctor_love11 days ago
settle down
jiexiang10 days ago
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vrr04410 days ago
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pukaworks11 days ago
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