An office hockey pool runs on Estrade with a Season Pass for a single pool, with a company league or with the Grand Pool Pass. A company league groups one employer's pools under the company's email domain, with standings across the pools. The Grand Pool Pass covers one large box pool, with no limit on participants.
One pool or several
If the office has only one pool of twenty poolers or fewer, you don't need a league. The commissioner pays for a Season Pass at $39 for the pool, and colleagues play for free. Passes are paid per pool, never per pooler.
The league is for when several pools live in the same company: one per floor, per department or per branch, for example. Each pool keeps its commissioner, its draft and its rules. The league adds shared standings, access through the company email and a single invoice for everything.
Open the league
You need an Estrade account with your work address. On the Pricing page, click Open a league under Team or Organization, then fill in two fields:
- The League name, from 3 to 40 characters.
- Your employer's Email domain.
The domain has to be the one of the address you're signed in with. A personal address (Gmail, Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, iCloud and other consumer providers) can't hold a company league, and Estrade tells you before you go any further.
Click Send the confirmation link. The link arrives at your address, and nothing is reserved until you've opened it, signed in with the same address. A domain belongs to only one league across all of Estrade, and the first confirmation click takes it. Once the link is open, you land on the league page, where you choose your plan and open pools.
Team and Organization
Both plans cover one NHL year and give the same rights on every pool in the league. They differ by the number of pools.
- Team, $199 for the NHL year: up to five season pools per NHL year. The playoff pools of those pools are included and don't count toward the limit of five.
- Organization, $599 for the NHL year: unlimited pools, including box pools with more than twenty participants.
Prices are shown before taxes, in Canadian dollars. Your province's taxes are added at the Stripe checkout, based on your billing address. The plans are sold in Canada only, and only on the web: the iPhone and iPad app won't sell them.
The plan is paid as a yearly subscription or as a one-time payment. As a subscription, it renews on the same date every year, at your plan's yearly price, and then covers the next NHL year. You can stop it at any time with Manage subscription, on the league page. The league stays covered until the end of the paid period.
A league that starts on Team can move to the Organization plan later. The upgrade is paid once, $400 before taxes, and the Upgrade to the Organization plan button shows up on the league page. If the Team plan was a subscription, it then renews at the Organization plan's yearly price.
A drafted pool has twenty poolers at most, in a league as everywhere else on Estrade. The league page always shows the plan, the year covered, the number of pools used and the number of poolers.
Access to the pools
The league's pools are reserved for addresses on the company domain and for people the commissioner invites by email. A colleague who opens the invitation link with a company address can get in. Someone with another address, a consultant or a former colleague for example, gets in only if the commissioner invited them by their email. Otherwise, the page tells them the pool is reserved for company addresses and invited people.
The pool's commissioner and the league's administrators can always get in.
Running the league
Whoever opens the league is its owner. They can add co-commissioners, by their email, in the league settings. A co-commissioner manages every pool in the league. Billing (the plan, the subscription, the invoices) and the list of co-commissioners stay with the owner.
From the league page, you open a pool by choosing its format: points, or grid, a box pool with no draft.
You give the pool a name, for example "Plant 2026", and it shows up in the league's table of pools with its commissioner, its spots and its status: in setup, draft in progress, in season. To change a pool's commissioner, choose someone who has a spot in that pool or a role in the league.
The league settings also have a box to allow public pool pages, as token standings. It's closed by default: the standings stay inside the company. Opening it lets each commissioner turn on their public link.
What colleagues see from one pool to another
Each pool stays closed to the others. Only one thing comes out: the league standings. In the same league, a pooler sees from the other pools the pool's name, the poolers' display names, their points and their rank. They never see a lineup, a draft or a trade. A box pool's grids and a prediction pool's predictions stay closed too.
The league standings are read by NHL year and by type of pool. A pool enters them when its draft is over or, for a box pool, when the grids are locked. Practice pools, demo pools and archived pools aren't in them. Neither is a pooler who doesn't have any players yet.
Comparing pools of different sizes and rules takes an index. When the league's pools don't have the same rules, the standings count how far each pooler beats their pool's average: 100 means average. When all the pools have the same format, the same lineup or grid structure, the same rules, the same number of poolers and the same scoring start day, the standings simply count points. The leader of each pool gets the "1st in pool" label. A pool whose total is zero or negative has no rank: its poolers are listed separately, under "No points yet".
The invoice and the logo
For each purchase, Stripe issues the paid invoice. For a plan paid as a one-time payment, its description names Estrade, the plan, the NHL year and your league's name. Invoices are listed in the League invoices section of the league page. A refund is made by a credit note on the invoice, taxes included.
The logo is uploaded in the league settings, under Logo, and removed in the same place. It's used as the preview image of a league pool's invitation link, when that link is shared in a message or a channel. A pool that has its own logo keeps it.
One big pool for the whole company
An office pool can go over twenty people. The Grand Pool Pass, $99 per pool for the NHL year, is made for that case: a box pool with no limit on participants. The commissioner pays for it, like the other passes, and participants play for free.
In a box pool, there's no draft. The commissioner prepares boxes of players, and each participant picks one player per box. Several participants can pick the same player. The starting template has six forward boxes, three defenseman boxes and one goalie box, with six options per box. The commissioner sets these numbers, for three to twenty boxes in all, and edits each box by hand.
Each participant opens My grid, picks a player in each box and answers the Tiebreaker question, which breaks ties. At the deadline, complete grids lock on their own, and an incomplete grid doesn't count. Sign-ups and grids are free: the pass is paid before the deadline.
The Grand Pool Pass includes a Playoff Pass for a playoff pool played as a grid or predictions: there's nothing more to buy for that pool.
In a league, a box pool with more than twenty participants needs either a Grand Pool Pass or the Organization plan. The Team plan doesn't open it.
Try it first
In a league, you need a paid plan to open a pool. To see how everything works before getting the office involved, Try a demo pool, in My pools, opens a pool against made-up opponents, and the Practice draft creates a test pool where nothing is kept at the end.