MUSTDRAFThockey

Mock Draft RoomDraft against a hockey room

Eleven computer seats that draft the way fantasy hockey rooms draft: to a lineup, off real draft position, with a run on goalies once the elite ones go. Pick your host’s roster shape and scoring, take a seat, and you are on the clock in seconds.

16rounds in this room: 12 starters and 4 bench

Your league in one tap

a preset fills every chip below; change anything after
Roster

Format

Teams

Your pick

Length
Opponents

Free, no account needed. The room is written into the page address as you set it, so the link in your address bar re-runs this exact room. Signed in, the draft saves to your account as you pick; signed out, it stays in this browser.
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Field guide

What a mock draft can and cannot teach you

A week before draft night is when this room earns its keep. Every other seat drafts from average draft position, where players are really going in fantasy hockey drafts this week, bent by what that roster still needs. It stops stacking wingers once its starters are set, takes a goalie at a believable time, and fills the bench last. What it cannot do is scheme against you personally.

Chalk, Realistic and Chaotic teach three different lessons. Chalk shows the earliest a player can realistically fall. Realistic behaves like a live room and is the setting for honest reps. Chaotic produces the ugly draft, the backup goalie in round four and your round-six target gone in three. The roster chips are the two hosts’ own shapes, Yahoo’s split wings and ESPN’s pooled forwards, and the format chip prices the board in points, categories or roto before you sit down.

Read the rest

Suggestions are a market check, not a verdict

Every suggestion lists its actual reasons: value against the market, an open starting slot, a tier about to end, a run on one position, the odds a player survives to your next pick. The final grade is a documented formula over the same public data. Reaching for a player you believe in is a legitimate strategy; the market just wants a word first. Definitions live on the methodology page.

How a computer seat picks

Each seat looks at a window of the next players by average draft position, weights the nearest most heavily, and bends the choice toward what its roster still lacks. The three styles are those two settings. Chalk looks two players deep and weights need at about half strength, so it takes the consensus pick nearly every time. Realistic looks seven deep with need at full strength, which is what a room of people who each have a list and a roster looks like. Chaotic looks sixteen deep and lets need slip, so a seat can reach for a name you had pencilled in for three rounds later. A hockey seat pulls toward an open lineup seat harder than a football seat does and discounts a player who fills nothing while starters are still open, because a second bench winger does nothing for a roster with an open defence seat on a night three defencemen play. Every room draws a seed and writes it into the page address along with the roster, format, size and your seat, so the link in your address bar re-runs the same room: the same seats opening the same way, for you a week later or a friend in the group chat.

The goalie run, and the goalie cliff

One thing a model drafting purely off average draft position would miss is what happens in a real hockey room once the first goalie goes. The seats that still need one reach, and two or three go in a row. The room has that rule. A computer seat with an open goalie seat that sees two or more goalies among the last six picks multiplies every goalie on its list by 1.6, and a seat whose goalie seats are full ignores the run entirely, because it has nothing to protect. The room also reads the goalie tiers off the board. Tiers are drawn where the value between two consecutive goalies steps down unusually far, and once the best remaining tier is down to its last three, every seat that still needs a goalie reaches before the drop. The suggestion card says so in plain words, three starting goalies left before the drop, and the goalie watch tile above the board counts them down. Watch for it in a Realistic draft from a late slot: the top goalies go in the early rounds by average draft position, the run starts behind them, and if you are holding out for the fourth-best goalie you will see him vanish inside it. Taking your first goalie a round earlier than the board says, or waiting for the run to burn out and taking the tenth-best two rounds later, are both defensible; drafting into the middle of it is not. In the bench rounds the seats take a third goalie the way real rosters do, because a tandem’s starter is announced the day of the game and a back-to-back hands the second night to the backup.

What the room gets right about hockey

The seats draft to a roster, not to a list, so a room that starts two goalies takes its second one before the bench fills and a room that starts four defencemen drafts them as the scarce seats they are. The three roster presets match the shapes the hosts actually run: the Yahoo default of two centres, two left wings, two right wings, four defencemen and two goalies with four bench seats and two injured reserve seats; the ESPN default, which pools nine forwards of any wing, five defencemen, one utility skater and two goalies with five bench seats; and a deep-league shape three lines and five defencemen deep. A centre fills any forward seat on the ESPN shape and only a centre seat or the utility on Yahoo, and the room seats him accordingly. Your grade is stamped with the hockey formula’s own version, so it is never compared with a football grade. Once the real draft arrives, the draft companion is the same board with the picks removed as they go, and if your league still needs an order, the draft order page draws one with a link as the receipt.