The commissioner sets the rules, invites the group and runs draft night. Most of the decisions below have a default value in Estrade, which you can change before the draft.
The hockey pool
A hockey pool is a game between friends, colleagues or family members. Each participant, the pooler, builds a fantasy team of NHL players. Their points come from those players' real stats, and the standings move during the season.
One person runs the whole thing: the commissioner. They create the pool, send the invitation link, set the rules and settle the cases nobody planned for. On Estrade, playing is free for poolers, who sign in without a password through a link sent to their email, and the commissioner pays for one pass per pool.
When you start a pool, you first choose the type:
- Cumulative points: every point your players score counts, all season.
- Head-to-head: a matchup against another pooler every week.
- Grid (box pool): no draft, each participant picks one player per box.
The first two types are played with a draft, where each NHL player goes to only one team. To test the draft, the practice draft creates a pool that doesn't need a pass, and nothing is kept at the end. To try it without your group, Try a demo pool, in My pools, opens a pool against made-up opponents.
Number of poolers
A drafted pool has up to 20 poolers. The random draw for the draft order needs at least 4 poolers. Under 4, the draft still starts after a confirmation, and nobody else can join after that. A box pool goes over 20 participants with the Grand Pool Pass or the Organization plan.
The number of poolers sets the length of draft night. The lineup total gives the number of rounds, not counting injured reserve. With a season pool's default lineup, 6 forwards, 4 defensemen, 2 goalies and 3 bench spots, that makes 15 rounds. At 20 poolers, draft night has 300 picks.
Head-to-head adds one detail: with an odd number of poolers, one pooler has a bye every week. An even number avoids that.
Until the draft has started, the commissioner can remove a pooler, and their team and draft queue are deleted. Once the draft has started, nobody can be removed.
For a work group, the page on the office hockey pool covers pools of more than twenty people and companies with several pools.
Snake draft and random draw
These are two separate decisions. The snake says how the order repeats from one round to the next, and the draw says how the starting order is set. Estrade uses the snake draft by default: the order reverses every round, so whoever picks last in round 1 picks first in round 2.
The starting order comes either from the join order in the pool, the default, or from an animated random draw the commissioner runs in front of everyone. If nobody has run the draw before the start, Estrade draws the order when the draft starts. A pick clock sets the length of each turn, 60 seconds by default.
A draw gives someone the first pick. To make up for it, Estrade offers compensation points to the last spots in the draw, checked by default. The first half of the order gets nothing, then each spot gets one more point. With 8 poolers, that gives 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4. These points don't count in the standings. They're used to bid on a waiver claim during the season.
The snake draft with a third-round reversal repeats round 2's order in round 3. The page on the draft has the table, the pick clock and the draft queue.
Typical scoring
The scoring says how many points each stat is worth, and the commissioner sets each one. A season pool's default scoring, the one from the Classic pool button, gives 2 points per goal, 1 per assist, 2 per win and 3 per shutout:
| Stat | Points |
|---|---|
| Goal | 2 |
| Assist | 1 |
| Shot on goal | 0.2 |
| Plus-minus | 0.5 |
| Win | 2 |
| Shutout | 3 |
The Advanced pool and Goalie Plus pool buttons fill in the form with other values, and the commissioner can set each stat by hand. An empty field turns the stat off, and a negative number takes points away.
Percentages (faceoffs, goals-against average, save percentage) don't give points. They're used as categories in head-to-head, where the commissioner chooses whether the week is won on total points or by categories.
A scoring change during the season needs a reason and applies from today: games already played keep the old scoring. The commissioner can also apply a scoring to past games with the retroactive catch-up. A playoff pool's scoring has its own default values, because the playoffs have far fewer games.
Salary cap
A cap gives every pooler the same budget: each player costs the value of their NHL contract, and the sum of their players can't go over it. Estrade checks it at the draft, in trades and in waiver claims.
In Estrade, the cap is a pool setting, off by default. The commissioner turns it on and chooses the amount, which starts at $104 million. The setting locks at the first pick of the draft, so decide on it before draft night.
In the draft room, a gauge shows the total spent. Once on, the cap is checked at every step where a player changes teams:
- at the draft, a pick that goes over what the pooler has left is refused, and auto-pick skips that player;
- during the season, a trade that puts either pooler over the cap is refused;
- a waiver claim follows the same rule, and if the winner goes over, the player goes to the next one.
A player with no salary value counts at the NHL minimum salary, $775,000. The page on the salary cap explains where the values come from and how the commissioner fixes the ones in their pool.
Box pool or draft
In a draft, a player belongs to only one pooler, and the group gets together one night to pick in turn. In a box pool, there's no draft night: the commissioner prepares boxes of players, and each participant picks one player per box. Several participants can pick the same player.
The commissioner sets the number of boxes: 6 forward boxes, 3 defenseman boxes and 1 goalie box by default, with an optional NHL team box. There must be 3 to 20 boxes in all. Each box has 6 options by default, from 2 to 12.
Each participant answers the tiebreaker question, if the commissioner asks one, which breaks ties. At the deadline, complete grids lock on their own, and an incomplete grid doesn't count. In a box pool, trades and waivers are off, but replacements within the same box are allowed by default in a season grid, three of them, and off in a playoff grid.
The draft keeps trades and waivers, and the commissioner can switch to a slow draft, with a few hours per pick, when one night isn't enough. The box pool suits a large group, and a group that would rather not get together.
Playoff pool
The NHL playoffs bring together the 16 qualified teams, in four rounds of seven games at most. A playoff pool counts only the points from those games, so it runs over a few weeks instead of the whole season, with a draft or a grid like in the season, or with predictions, a format of its own for the playoffs.
A playoff pool has three formats: a snake draft among the players of the 16 teams, a box grid with no draft, or predictions where each pooler picks the winner and the number of games of each series. The default scoring counts 1 point per goal, 1 per assist, 2 per goalie win and 2 per shutout.
Predictions are played as a full bracket, filled in before the first playoff game, or round by round. A series you didn't predict is worth 0, and each series closes on its own at game time. The commissioner can change the scoring and add up to three bonus questions. The favourite team earns one point per win by default.
The playoff pool needs the Playoff Pass, or a Combo Pass that covers the season and the playoffs.