Hide player spoilers

How to avoid being spoiled by how long the archived game lasts

...using VLC player

Press CTRL + h to hide the status bar, this can be set as default preference in VLC settings :

• Click Tools -> Preferences or press Ctrl + P to bring Preferences dialog box.
• In Preferences dialog box, click Interface and check Start in minimal view mode and save.

...using MPV player

Tired of watching archived games and getting clues as to how long the game lasts, thereby indicating whether the game goes into overtime or not.

In your NHLGames settings, scroll down to "Player Args" and enter this:
--osd-level=0 --script-opts=osc-layout=slimbox,osc-valign=-1.11,osc-halign=2.7,osc-deadzonesi

Here's what this does:

• --osd-level=0 : disables the On Screen Display ( the box that pops up every time you seek and shows how far into the file you are).
• --script-opts : customize the On Screen Control with custom commands that follow (osc-layout).
• osc-layout=slimbox: sets the OSC layout to a much smaller and cleaner design.
• osc-valign=1.11 : pushes the entire OSC all the way to the top, and then some, to completely hide the seek bar.
• osc-halign=2.7 : pushes the OSC again, this time way to the right, hiding the Remaining Time display and the Cache display.

  You can tweak this number if you want to see the cache time.

• osc-deadzonesize=0.95 : shows the OSC when the mouse is on the top 5% of the video window

How to skip commercials:

Luckily the NHL has approximately 1 minute and 30 seconds long commercials, while time between periods are approximately 18 minutes.

Pressing Arrow Up on your keyboard skips 1 minute, while pressing Arrow Right skips 5 seconds. It's a lot of clicks, but worth it to avoid spoilers.

If you really want to get technical, or your keyboard can't handle all the clicks, you can put a file called input.conf in the same folder as mpv.exe (see the settings for the path) with the following values

• Ctrl+UP no-osd seek 1080
• Ctrl+RIGHT no-osd seek 90

This adds two seeks, one seeking 18 minutes, the other 90 seconds. Commerical times are not always accurate, but it's never less than 90 seconds, so you might have to just regular right arrow a few times to skip it completely.

Don't forget to turn it off when watching live games.

Credit: /u/PistachioPlz