Game modes

Daily drafts

The daily board is the format most puckheads live in. It opens each afternoon, fills through the evening and closes at the opening faceoff. You draft three forwards, two defensemen and a goaltender with no salary cap, which means the entire exercise is a judgement call about matchups, minutes and goaltender workload rather than an arithmetic puzzle about cap space.

Because a daily board settles the same night, the feedback loop is short. You learn quickly that a second-pairing defenseman on the top power-play unit is often worth more than a famous name on a team that is resting starters. Nothing carries over to the next day, so a bad read costs you an evening and nothing more.

Season long

Season-long leagues run from the October opener to the final playoff shift. You draft a deeper roster, you carry injuries, and you make the same painful decision every real manager makes in February: hold the veteran who is fading or gamble on the rookie whose minutes are climbing. Trades between managers are allowed until the league deadline, after which rosters are frozen for the run-in.

Season play rewards patience over reaction. The managers who finish top of the table are rarely the ones who churn their lineup weekly — they are the ones who identified two undervalued skaters in October and held them through a cold January.

Match simulator

The simulator runs your proposed lineup against a chosen opponent using the same projection model that drives our board previews. It reports a distribution rather than a single number, because a lineup that averages sixty points with a wide spread is a different proposition from one that averages fifty-eight and almost never busts.

Use it as a sanity check, not an oracle. The model knows usage, shot volume and recent form. It does not know that a winger's flight was delayed or that a coach has quietly soured on his third line. That part is still your job, and it is why this stays a game of skill.