A salary cap hockey pool gives every pooler the same budget to build their team, and each player costs their salary value, like in the NHL. The page on the draft covers the rest of the draft night rules.

The cap is a pool setting

The cap is off by default. The commissioner checks Turn on the salary cap in the pool settings, then enters the Cap amount in dollars. The starting amount is $104 million, and the commissioner can change it to anything above zero.

The cap is the same for every pooler in the pool. Each one has their own total: the sum of their players' salary values.

The cap setting locks at the first pick of the draft, like the order and the draft rule. Turn it on and choose the amount before draft night.

Where the salary values come from

Each player in the catalogue has a salary value, the one from their NHL contract. The NHL data Estrade reads doesn't include that value. So Estrade collects it from the public salary pages of the 32 teams.

The collection runs once a week, on Sunday at 9:00 UTC, early morning Eastern time. It goes through the teams one by one, writes the values that changed, then refreshes the catalogue so the draft room serves that week's values.

Three special cases:

If a team's page doesn't respond, the collection carries on with the others, and that team keeps its previous values.
If Estrade can't read the list of NHL teams, the collection fails and nothing is written: last week's values are better than zeros.
A player the collection can't find keeps their value. When a player has no value at all, they count at the NHL minimum salary, $775,000.

So a collected value changes at most once a week. The new value of a signed contract or of salary retained in a trade only arrives the following Sunday. A traded player's team, on the other hand, updates every six hours.

Your pool's values

The commissioner can set a player's salary for their pool only. These values always take priority over the collected ones, and they apply everywhere: at the draft, in trades and in waiver claims. They can be changed at any time.

The commissioner goes through four steps, in the pool settings:

Download the Salaries (.xlsx) workbook.
Fill in the new value column, in dollars. An empty cell changes nothing.
Choose the file and click Check the file, then fix or remove the flagged rows.
Enter a Reason, one for the whole batch, and click Write the adjustments.

At the draft: every pick is checked

At each pick, Estrade compares the player's value to what the pooler has left: the cap, minus the value of the players they've already drafted. If the player costs more than what's left, the pick is refused and the pooler picks someone else.

A salary value changed during the draft counts right away, for players already drafted too. A pooler it puts over the cap keeps their players, but can't draft another player until they're back under the cap, which happens when the commissioner lowers a value or undoes the last pick.

In the draft room, a Salary cap gauge shows the total spent against the cap amount. The player list has a Salary value filter with the Only what I can afford option, which shows the amount you have left.

Auto-pick skips what doesn't fit

When the clock runs out, Estrade drafts the first player in the queue who is still available. With the cap, a player who would put the pooler over is skipped, like a player already taken.

The page on the draft describes the draft queue and the When the clock runs out rule, which applies when the queue is empty or the pooler has turned off auto-pick.

During the season

The cap keeps applying after the draft, to trades and waiver claims.

Trades

When the receiving pooler accepts an offer, Estrade calculates each pooler's total after the trade: the players they keep plus the ones they receive. If either one goes over the cap, the trade is refused. The check runs again when the trade goes through, at the end of the commissioner veto window. If a value changed in the meantime and one of the two poolers is now over, the trade doesn't happen.

Waiver claims

For a waiver claim, Estrade counts the pooler's players, minus the player they drop, plus the player claimed. When the claim drops a player, it's settled right away, and a cap overage is flagged when it's filed. Without a dropped player, the claim stays open during the claim window and is checked when it's awarded: if the winner is over the cap, the player goes to the next pooler.

What it means for the commissioner

Before starting the draft, go through the salary values of the players your group will be targeting and fix the ones that look wrong.

During the season, trades and waiver claims follow the pool's cap with no extra setting.