Compare Players

What each card says

Every player gets a card before the tables start. The gold badge is his rank on the category board under the format you chose, so it moves when you switch from the default ten categories to points. The value underneath is the number that rank comes from: his z-scores summed over the categories in play on his side, or his projected fantasy points. The average draft position is the room's price. The last line is the schedule, the club's games in the current fantasy week and the week after, because a four-game week against a two-game week is often a bigger difference than the one between two similar wingers.

How a category is decided

On season totals, the projection's z-score decides each row. A z-score is the number of spreads a player sits above or below the average player in the pool the category board prices, so a z of plus two in shots is a real weekly edge and a z near zero is the average skater. It is the fairest single measure of a season's contribution: forty goals from a player who plays eighty-two games and forty from one who plays sixty-five are the same forty goals in your standings. Per game, the figure on the screen decides instead, because the question has changed from what a player adds over a season to what he does on the nights he dresses. The two answers differ exactly when games played differ, and that difference is the point of the toggle. Where less is better, the lower figure takes the row: goals-against average for a goalie, and penalty minutes in the full twelve-category set. Two figures equal at the precision shown are a tie, and nobody takes that row.

Skaters and goalies are compared apart

A goalie and a skater share no category. A save percentage cannot be set against a hit, so when a comparison holds both the page draws two tables, one for each side, and the verdict says that only the value compares them. The value is the same number the category board ranks on: the sum of a player's z-scores over the categories in play on his side. That is how the board puts a goalie and a centre in one list, and it is the honest way to answer "which of these do I draft" when the choice really is a goalie against a skater. It is not a way to decide a category, which is why the tables stay apart.

The record, and what a window can tell you

The record is per game over a window: the whole season, or the last 30, 14 or 7 days. The season line comes from the season's box scores; the shorter windows are the same trend tables the trends page reads. Ice time sits under the categories for a reason. A winger whose even-strength and power-play minutes have climbed for two weeks is a different player from the one the projection was built on, and the minutes usually move before the points do. A goalie's window is his starts, so a hot fortnight on four starts is four games of evidence, and the games row says so before you read anything else. Before opening night every window is the end of last season, and the caption says it; rosters have changed since, and a player traded in the summer is compared on a record he built somewhere else.

The verdict, and the room

The stamp names the player with the higher value on the format you chose. When the gap is under half a z-score summed across every category, less than half of one category's spread, it says the comparison is too close to call, because at that distance the order depends on a single projected goal or a single projected hit. In a points league the threshold is three percent of the leader's projected points. Beside it, the page says where the draft room disagrees: the average draft position of each player, lowest first. When our value and the room point at different players, that gap is either a mistake in the room or a thing the room knows and a projection cannot, such as a new linemate, a contract year, or a coach's plan for a veteran, and it deserves a look before you pick.

Formats, punts and sharing

The format chips are the category board's: the default ten categories, the full twelve that adds penalty minutes and blocks, the nine-category rotisserie set, and points. In the ten- and twelve-category sets a category can be punted from its row: it stays on the table, greyed, and stops deciding anything, so a manager building a team that ignores plus-minus can see the comparison without it. The players, the format, the punts, the figures and the window all live in the address, so the link the button copies opens the same comparison for whoever you send it to, and a link copied from the category board opens this page on the same settings.

The projection refreshes with the category board; the record is rebuilt from the box scores on our own feeds. If the pool cannot be priced, the page says so rather than showing a stale comparison. See the methodology for how the values are built.