Glossary

The activity feed shows recent events in a pool: roster changes, trades, scoring updates, and member joins. View it in the Activity tab to stay informed about what other members are doing and how the pool is evolving.

The bench holds players from your roster who are not in your active lineup. Bench players do not earn points. You can swap players between your lineup and bench based on pool rules. Bench slots vary by pool type (e.g., 4 bench spots in standard leagues).

Broadcast messages (or site alerts) are announcements sent by site administrators to every user. They appear at the top of your inbox with a SITE ALERT badge. Use them for maintenance notices, feature updates, or important announcements.

The commissioner is the person who created the pool and has full administrative control. They can invite or remove members, edit scoring rules, lock or unlock the pool, change settings, and delete the pool. Commissioners see a Settings tab in the pool sidebar. Only one user is the commissioner per pool.

A daily contest is a pool that runs for a single day of NHL games. You draft a roster for that day, and points are scored from that day's games only. New contests start each day. Best for fast-paced play and quick results.

Discover is the page where you browse and join public pools. Commissioners can make pools public so they appear here. Use it to find leagues that match your preferences or to join friends' public pools.

Add a player to your Do Not Draft list when you do not want smart auto-pick to select them. The list is private, and a manager can still make a deliberate manual selection if that player remains legal and available.

The draft is how you initially build your roster. Pool owners can enable drafts and share draft rooms. Once the draft is complete, rosters can still be managed based on pool rules (add/drop, trades if enabled). Draft order and format are set by the commissioner.

After the final turn, Draft League checks every roster and shows skipped or incomplete assignments. The commissioner resolves any blocker and then finalizes all roster assignments together, so the draft cannot finish in a partially applied state.

Draft League is available for regular-season and playoff pools. It uses a secure random snake order, exact position quotas, and exclusive player ownership. Managers can draft live or over multiple days, leave and safely return, then claim available players first-come after the commissioner finalizes every roster.

After a Draft League is finalized, a manager can claim an unowned player. When the roster is full, the manager releases a same-position player in the same all-or-nothing move. If another team wins the player first, the released player stays on the roster.

After the order and rankings are ready, the commissioner opens the Draft Lobby. Managers can review the snake order, prepare their queue and Do Not Draft list, see who is ready, and return later without losing their preparation.

Your Draft Queue is visible only to you. You can arrange preferred players before or during the draft. Smart auto-pick checks the legal players in this queue before using the room's explainable recommendations.

Draft League clocks always pause from 11 PM until 8 AM in the commissioner-selected timezone. No active pick time is consumed overnight, including across daylight-saving time changes. The room shows the local resume time.

Draft League commissioners choose 1-12 forwards, 1-6 defensemen, and 1-3 goalies, with 3-20 total players and no bench or LTIR. The draft room blocks a pick when it would fill a position or make the remaining exact roster impossible to complete.

In Draft League, drafting or claiming a player makes that player unavailable to every other team in the same pool. Atomic transactions and a database constraint protect ownership when managers act at the same time.

Before the lobby opens, Draft League builds and freezes a projection for eligible NHL players. The snapshot keeps the base ranking stable for every manager while live recommendations add position scarcity, roster need, recent draft trends, and injury risk.

Head-to-head (H2H) is a pool format where you face a single opponent each week. The higher point total wins the matchup. Standings track wins, losses, and ties. Requires an even number of members for scheduling.

An invite is how new members join a private pool. The commissioner generates an invite link or sends an invite by email. Recipients use the link to join without needing the pool to be public. Invites can expire or be revoked by the commissioner.

Your lineup consists of the active players from your roster who earn points. Each pool has position requirements (e.g., 6 forwards, 3 defense, 1 goalie in active slots). Players on the bench are part of your roster but do not score. You can swap players between your lineup and bench based on pool rules. Setting the right lineup each day is key to maximizing points when your players have games.

LTIR (Long-Term Injured Reserve) is an NHL designation for injured players. In salary cap pools with LTIR cap relief enabled, players in LTIR slots do not count toward your cap total—similar to NHL rules. Commissioners can enable this in pool settings.

A matchup is a weekly head-to-head battle between two pool members in H2H leagues. Each week you face a different opponent. The member with the higher point total wins the matchup. Your win/loss record determines your standing.

A pool is a fantasy hockey league you create or join. Each pool has its own rules, scoring system, member limit, and season. Pools can be public (discoverable) or private (invite-only). As a pool member, you compete against others by building a roster of NHL players and earning points based on their real-world performance.

Pool chat is the shared message channel for all members of a pool. Everyone in the pool can read and send messages. Use it for league discussion, trash talk, trade negotiations, or coordinating with your league mates.

A locked pool prevents roster changes, scoring edits, and new members from joining. Commissioners can lock a pool at any time—often for playoffs or key periods. Once locked, the pool runs in read-only mode until the commissioner unlocks it.

A pool member is any user who has joined a pool and participates in the competition. Members build and manage their own roster of NHL players, track their standings, and can trade players (if trades are enabled). Members can view the pool's leaderboard, activity feed, and messages. The commissioner is also a pool member, with additional admin privileges.

Pool type defines the league format and rules. Standard is season-long with unlimited changes. Head-to-Head uses weekly matchups. Salary Cap adds a budget constraint. Daily runs single-day contests. Choose the type when creating a pool.

A private message (or DM) is a direct conversation between you and another user. Unlike pool chat, only you and the recipient can see the messages. Use it for trade discussions, coordination, or private communication.

A private pool is not listed on Discover. New members can only join via an invite link or email from the commissioner. Use private pools for friends, office leagues, or any league you want to keep closed.

A public pool appears on the Discover page so any user can find and join it. Commissioners can toggle a pool between public and private in Pool Settings. Public pools are good for open leagues and finding new opponents.

Your roster is the full set of NHL players you have selected for a pool. Each pool type has roster limits (e.g., 6 forwards, 3 defense, 1 goalie, plus bench players). You add or remove players from your roster based on pool rules. Only players in your lineup (active slots) score points; bench players do not. Rosters can be locked by the commissioner to prevent changes during playoffs or key periods.

In salary cap leagues, each player has a salary and your roster must stay under the cap (e.g. ~$50M). When adding or trading players, your total salary cannot exceed the cap. Requires strategic roster construction and value decisions.

Scoring lock determines when a player's stats are finalized for the day. When configured to lock at game time, once a player's game starts, their stats for that day are set and they can no longer earn points. Prevents last-minute lineup swaps after games begin.

Scoring rules define how many points each stat earns (e.g., 1 for goals, 0.5 for assists). The commissioner configures these in Pool Settings. Points are calculated from live NHL stats. Goalie goals-against can use a negative value to deduct points per goal allowed.

A site administrator is a staff member who can send broadcast messages, access the admin panel, and manage site-wide settings. They are not pool commissioners—they operate at the platform level. In pool chat, messages from site admins show a special badge.

Smart auto-pick checks the manager's queue first, excludes their Do Not Draft list, then chooses the highest legal recommendation. It respects exact position quotas and avoids injured players while a healthy legal option remains.

In a snake draft, the team that picks first in one round picks last in the next. Draft League securely randomizes the first-round order, then reverses that order each round so the same team does not always receive the earliest pick.

A standard league runs for the full NHL season. You have unlimited roster changes subject to scoring locks. The classic fantasy hockey format: build a roster, compete daily, and climb the standings over the season.

Your standing is your current rank and total points in the pool leaderboard. Standings are sorted by total points (highest first), with tie-breakers using goals, then assists. The Summary tab shows the full standings table. Your standing updates as NHL games are played and stats are recorded. Climb the ranks by building a strong roster and lineup.

Your team name is how you appear in a pool's standings and leaderboard. It is set per pool by the commissioner. If you need to change it, contact the pool admin. Team names help identify who's who in the competition.

A trade is an offer to swap one or more players with another pool member. When trades are enabled by the commissioner, you can propose trades from the Trades tab. The other member can accept or reject. Trades may have a deadline set by the pool rules.

The trade deadline is the last date when trades can be proposed or completed in a pool. After the deadline, the Trades tab is disabled. Commissioners set the deadline in pool rules, often aligned with the NHL trade deadline.