Mock Draft RoomDraft against a hockey room

Choose the roster your league actually uses

The roster chips change more than the number of rounds. Split wings is two centres, two left wings, two right wings, four defencemen and two goalies, with four bench spots: twelve starters and a sixteen-round draft, where each forward can start only at a position he is eligible for. Pooled forwards treats every forward alike, with nine forward seats any centre or winger can fill, five defencemen, one utility skater and two goalies, plus five on the bench, which makes a twenty-two-round draft. Deep league runs three seats at each forward position, five defencemen, a utility seat and two goalies, for leagues that want the late rounds to matter.

Strategy shifts with the shape. With split wings the three forward positions can run dry at different times, and you may have to reach for whichever one is thinning out. With pooled forwards, position barely matters up front, so the defence and goalie seats become the scarce ones. The computer seats read the shape too, and fill the seats it requires before they think about the bench.

Points, categories or roto

The format chip reprices every player before the first pick. In points, the board rewards volume: goals, assists, shots, power-play points and blocked shots all add up, and goalie wins and saves count heavily. In categories, a player is worth what he adds across your league's columns, so a defenceman who piles up hits and blocks, or a forward who lives on the power play, can climb well above where a points board has him, and a goalie who helps save percentage and goals-against average carries real weight. Roto uses the same idea over the whole season instead of week by week. The grade at the end reads the same values, so a draft built for categories is judged as a categories draft, and a reach for a hits-and-blocks defenceman that looks early on a points board can still grade well.

How the computer seats choose

Each computer seat looks at a short list of the next players by average draft position, favours the ones nearest the top of that list, and leans toward players who fill a seat it has not filled yet. The three opponent settings move those two dials. Chalk considers only the next two players, with roster need at a little over half strength. Realistic considers the next seven, with need at full strength. Chaotic considers sixteen and turns need back down, so its picks scatter. On top of that, hockey seats pull hard toward an empty lineup seat and away from a player who fills nothing while starters are still missing, because an open defence or goalie seat costs a fantasy team on every night of the schedule and a fifth winger on the bench does not. The room is seeded: the seed, your roster shape, format, league size and seat all go into the page address, so the link reproduces the same room for you next week or for a friend in the group chat.

Goalie runs, and the last starters in a tier

Real hockey drafts tend to go quiet on goalies and then take several in a row once the first good one goes, as managers who planned to wait start to worry. The room copies that. A computer seat that still needs a starting goalie and sees at least two goalies among the last six picks multiplies the weight on every goalie it is considering by 1.6; a seat whose goalie spots are already full ignores the run. The room also splits goalies into tiers wherever the gap between one goalie's value and the next is unusually large, and when the best tier left is down to three, seats that still need a starter lean toward them again, by 1.5.

You will see both rules on screen. The goalie watch above the board counts down that tier, and a suggestion card will tell you how many starting goalies are left before the drop. There are two sound responses: take your goalie a little before the run starts, or let it burn out and collect value several rounds later. Jumping in halfway through usually means paying run prices for the fourth or fifth name. In the bench rounds, the computer seats also take a third goalie, because creases are shared and back-to-backs often go to the backup, so two goalies alone can leave a lineup short on some nights. The goalie tandem page is worth a read before your real draft.

Suggestions, the board and the queue

On the clock, the suggestions tab offers a few players with the reasons spelled out: how far the market ranks him ahead of or behind this pick, whether he fills an open seat, whether he is the last of a tier at his position, whether a run is under way, and whether he is likely to last until your next turn. The players tab filters by centre, either wing, defence or goalie, sorts by draft position or by our value, and shows each player's chance of still being there at your next pick. Star a player to queue him, and auto-pick takes the first queued player still available. Undo takes back your most recent pick and the computer picks made after it; with the same seed they choose the same players again, so you can try someone else in that spot and see what changes.

After the last pick

When the draft ends you get a grade and a report: your roster by seat, your steals and reaches against our value ranks, and a table of the whole room by starters, bench and goalies. The formula behind the grade sits in its own panel under the report. Draft this room again replays the same seats from the same seed, the quickest way to test a different plan, such as taking your first goalie two rounds earlier. New room starts over with a fresh seed. Signed in, the draft saves to your account as you pick and can be shared as a report; signed out, it stays in this browser. On the real night, keep the draft companion open beside your league's draft, and if the order is still undecided, the draft order page will draw one. Grading a finished league draft is a job for the draft grader.