Frequently Asked Questions

We have compiled a list of frequently asked questions to hopefully answer any and all the questions you might have about our service. Go ahead and browse through the list below, and if you still can’t find an answer you are looking for, feel free to Contact Us.

Question Will you be including the qualifying round and round robin?

Answer Yes, by default we'll be including the points by players and goalies in the qualifying round and round robin. If you'd prefer to not include the preliminary round, you can set a different start date.

Question How much does your service cost?

Answer We offer a free 7 day trial which starts on the first day of the regular season or playoffs. If you decide you want to continue to use our service, then our regular ad-free version is $29.97 USD or you can save a few bucks and go with our discounted $19.97 USD version which has banner ads on your pool pages. Both are per pool, not per person (hooray!). The regular season and playoffs are separate but participants and picks can be reloaded into a playoff account. Payment can be made by logging into your pool and clicking the account status link located at the top left corner of the page.

Question How do I make changes to my pool?

Answer You can do this in the admin panel. To log in to the admin panel, you must first click the admin login link located just below the normal login form on the homepage.

Question How often are the stats updated?

Answer Stats are updated on a daily basis at 2:30am PST. We also have live, real-time stats that are updated every 5-10 minutes!

Question I created a box pool for the playoffs and I noticed that some of the players included may not qualify for the playoffs. Will the default box sheet be updated?

Answer We have a lot of eager users that like to get a jump start on their playoff pools hence we often release our default playoff box sheet before all of the teams that qualify for the playoffs are known. If the teams that qualify for the post-season end up changing, we will automatically replace the players that are golfing with players of similar value that are on the team that ended up making it.

Question Are all stat categories tracked live, in real-time?

Answer No, just the major stat categories are shown on the live stats page - for example, goals, assists, power play goals, penalty minutes, etc. All of the stat categories including the other ones are updated nightly.

Question I created a standard format account but would like to use the box format instead. What should I do?

Answer Unfortunately one pool format can't be converted to another. You'll need to create a new account with the correct format. If you wish to use the previous username that you selected, first log into the admin panel of that original account and change the username so that it is available. If you already completed payment, email us and we can swap the activation to the new account.

Question I created a box pool account and intended to use your default boxes but inadvertently chose to design them from scratch. How do I use your default boxes?

Answer If you want to load our default boxes and didn't choose this option during the registration process, then log into your admin panel and click the "Boxes" link on the side menu. You will be taken to a screen that typically lets you view/modify your boxes. Because there are none, there will be an error message with a link that you can click to load the default boxes into this account. If you have a box or two already created, you will need to delete them so that your pool has a clean slate before loading the default boxes.

Question How can I display a stat category, such as Games Played, without assigning a point value to it?

Answer You can do so by logging into the admin panel and going to the point system section. Then create a point system, call it 'display' for example, and then put a value of 0 beside the stat categories you'd like to display.

Question I'm a little confused with how the point system works. Does the "Goals" category include PPG and OTG. Similarly, does the "Shutout" category include Wins?

Answer Categories like "Goals", "Assists" and "Wins" can be seen as 'base' categories. Categories like PPG, OTG and Shutouts can be seen as 'bonus' categories, and are added on top of the value assigned to the base. As in the NHL, shootout goals are not included as regular goals. Unlike the NHL, we've separated out shootout wins and overtime wins as some pools just want to use shootouts. So if you want to assign goalie shootout wins and goalie overtime wins, enter a value for both categories. The same goes for overtime and shootout losses. Remember, if you use overtime/shootout categories for goalies, you will need to take into consideration the value you entered for the wins/loss goalie category to calculate it correctly.

Question I'm in a keeper league, how do I reload last season's data.

Answer During the sign-up process, or via the admin panel, click the 'keeper league reload' link found in the participants section. You will then be asked to enter last season's username and password. Once that's done, your new account will be reloaded with last season's participants, picks, and point systems. You can then edit those participants and picks with your pool's offseason changes.

Question How can I continue my regular season pool into the playoffs?

Answer The regular season and playoffs require two separate registrations. Similar to the keeper league reload function above, you can reload the regular season participants, picks, and point systems into a playoff account. The stats will not carry forward though as they are two separate accounts. You can however write down the final standings in your regular season account and then start off each participant at their previous regular season total. To do this, use the "Team Bonus" transaction feature. Please see the FAQ answer pertaining to transactions support.

Question What is a reserve roster?

Answer Some pools have an active roster and a reserve roster. In this type of pool, participants can swap out players from their active roster with players from their reserve roster. This is similar to an NHL team and their corresponding farm team or Dressed vs. Scratched players and makes the pool a bit more interactive. For example, each participant may have 21 players but are required to dress (make active at any given point) 18 of them. Which 18 will change through out the course of the season but only players that are in active mode (as opposed to being on the reserve) will be creditted with points. We currently support weekly and monthly participant-managed rosters in addition to admin-managed rosters. The deadline for weekly moves is Friday at 11:59pm and the deadline for monthly moves is 11:59pm on the last day of the month. Roster moves can be made at any time by participants. If your pool uses monthly reserve rosters and you do a switch on Oct 10th, your new active roster will not take effect until November 1. Also, if you make a move on Oct 10th and then change your mind, you can still change your roster. Your most most recent move will be the one that takes effect on the 1st (or on Saturday for weekly moves). For admin managed reserve rosters, moves are done via the "Active/Reserve" section of the admin panel. Reserve roster pools are not currently compatible with the Top N rule.

Question What is the Top N rule?

Answer Some pools have a top N rule which often results in a much closer race. This is when only the top N number of players on you roster count towards the total points in the standings. For example, everyone may draft 12 players but only the top 10 will count. This helps people stay in it even if they suffer a major injury early in the season. The rule is also fully customizable, for example, you can have the system only count the Top 10 forwards, 2 defensemen, 1 goalie, or any other combination that you may need calculated.

Question Can reserve rosters work in conjunction with the Top N feature?

Answer Currently, no. Both features are used to keep pools close and would somewhat conflict with each other. For example, if one of your players suffered an injury, you could sub him out for reserve roster pools whereas he probably wouldn't count anyways in a pool that uses the top N rule. We may look at supporting both features simultaneously in a pool in the future.

Question What kind of transactions do you support and how do I do a trade, signing, etc.?

Answer We support virtually any type of trade, signup, release, reserver roster, etc. You can have the traded players' points completely swapped or you can keep the points of the traded away player and start receiving points from the new player (from the trade date onward). You can also offset points if needed. All transactions (other than Active/Reserve roster moves for reserve roster pools) are done via the Transaction section of the admin panel.

Most Common Method (Keep points accumulated by dropped player, get new points of new player) - In order to complete a trade, you will need to drop a player and add a new one. In the case of a signing, you would just need to add a pick. In most cases, you want to keep the points of the dropped player and start accumulating points of the new player going forward. Basically, every pick can have one or more date ranges associated with it. The date range associated with a pick is the date range in which a pick is creditted with points. By default, the start date of a pick is the first day of the season. When you drop a pick, you would click "drop" beside the pick and select the last date that player is to be credited with points. You can then also choose to either remove him from the roster (but still keep his points) or have him moved to the bottom of the roster in a separate section. The difference is merely for display purposes. Similarly, to add a pick, you would click "add a new player to this roster" and choose the start date you want that pick to start accumulating points. For box pools, it's important that you enter the correct box number as this will affect the point system that pick uses.

Completely swap players and points - In this case, you would click "drop" and then the link to completely delete that player. You would then click "add a new player to this roster" and choose the first day of the season. You can choose any date before the start of the season if you are unsure of the exact date - it will default to the start of the season.

Using offsets for pools with the Top N rule - For pools that use the Top N rule, you may want to transfer the dropped player's points to the new player. In the above methods, our system treats the players separately. In order to get around this, you would need to transfer that player's current points to the new player. First, click the "add a new player to this roster" and select the start date of the new player. That player will be creditted with points from that day onward. Then, you want to add the points of the previous player to this new pick. Click the "manual offset" link beside the pick. You will likely need to first click the [expand] link near the top to see this option. Enter an offset value in the amount of points the player to be dropped has. After that's saved, you will need to completely delete the other player - select "drop" beside his name and then the link to completely delete him from the system.

Team Bonus - In addition to the manual player offset feature, you can add a special pick named "Team Bonus". You can add this special pick via the "add a new player to this roster" link. He is found under the last name "Bonus" and the first name "Team". This special pick can be used to award team bonus points for whatever reason and will appear on your roster just like a player would. In order to give points, you would offset this pick using the manual offset feature as you would a normal pick.

Question What stat categories can you track?

Answer Players -   Games played, goals, assists, points, +/-, total penalties, major penalties, minor penalties, penalty minutes, fights, power play goals, short handed goals, game winning goals, empty net goals, power play assists, short handed assists, overtime goals, shootout goals, shootout misses, shots and hat tricks.
Goalies -   For goalies, we can track games played in, games started, goals, assists, minutes played, goals against average, wins, losses, overtime wins, overtime losses, shootout wins, shootout losses, empty net goals, shutouts, goals against, shots against, saves, save percentage, total penalties, major penalties, minor penalties, penalty minutes, fights, goals, assists and points.
Teams -   We also can track teams - games played, wins, losses, overtime wins, overtime losses, shootout wins, shootout losses, points, winning percentage, goals for, goals against, shutouts and playoffs series victories (you can assign different points for each round).

Question We started our pool late. Can we start accumulating points from today onward?

Answer Yes, you have the ability to reset player stats and/or the overall team stats to 0. To set a different start date for your entire pool, go to the transaction area of the admin panel and choose "» Set start date for entire pool ".

Question How customizable is HockeyDraft.ca?

Answer You can customize everything - which stat categories, how much they're each worth, the number of picks per roster that count (Top N rule), assign different point systems to different positions, have reserved rosters, goon players, etc.

Question Can you describe the types of pools you support?

Answer Our standard format is a customizable hockey draft system which is demonstrated when you click the "Take A Peek" link in the blue section of the homepage. This is our most popular format and supports many customizable options including a top N rule, 3 stars of the draft, top pick/round, players in action, injury summary, transactions, printable reports, and more.

The second format we offer is a box selection pool. This is similar to the type of pools you see in magazines and newspapers. Participants select players from boxes of similarly grouped players. This type of pool does not require your group to get together as most drafts require. Entries can be submitted online at any time prior to the deadline you specify. You can even print and hand out entry forms. Choose from either our own default groupings or create your own customized hockey pool boxes.

Question Can I print out a "printer-friendly" version of my customized box pool.

Answer Yes, you can edit our regular season word template by downloading it here: box selection template (word)

Question There are player stats showing up in my pool and the season hasn't started yet.

Answer Last year's player stats are still loaded into the system but we will reset it to 0 prior to the start of the new season.

Question Do you have participant messaging capabilities?

Answer Each pool has its own private messaging board where you can trash talk all you want! In addition, the pool admin now has the ability to display announcements on the main standings and stats page.

Question I am in a regular season pool. Can I just edit this account for the playoffs?

Answer No, a new pool account must be created for the playoffs.

Question I have a goalie who shared the goaltending duties with his teammate and together they got a shutout but neither goalie was awarded points for the shutout. How come?

Answer We award stats in the same fashion as the NHL does. The NHL considers it a shared shutout therefore neither goalie gets credited with the shutout under their individual stats. The team does get awarded a shutout under their team stats. Our team stat categories do include team shutouts but in this case, participants would be selecting teams rather than goalies. For example, instead of selecting goalies (like Halak), you'd select teams (like St. Louis). Team names are found in the same player list where the city = first name (St. Louis) and team name = last name (Blues).