GAMES PER WEEK
Schedule Planner
4+ games: a full week2 or fewer: a light weekSmall figure: games on light nights
Light nights in this window
Compare two players' schedules
Nights each plays, and the nights both do
FIELD GUIDE
Why games per week decides more hockey matchups than talent does
A fantasy hockey week is a counting exercise before it is anything else. A club that plays four times gives every skater on it four chances to score; a club on a two-game week gives half that. Over a seven-day matchup that gap is usually bigger than the gap between a first-line winger and a second-line one, which is why the manager who checks the schedule on Monday beats the manager who only checks the rankings. This planner puts the count in front of you for the current week and the next three, one row per club, so a light week is something you plan around rather than discover on Thursday.
The light nights are the second half of the answer. On a night when only a handful of games are played, a streamer you pick up for that date competes with almost nobody for your open seat, and a bench player on a four-game club is worth starting over a star on a two-game one. The grid marks both.
Read the rest
Read the rest
How to read the grid
Each cell is the number of regular-season games that club plays inside that fantasy week, counted from the published league schedule. Weeks run Monday to Sunday, which is how the major fantasy platforms score a matchup by default; if your league uses a different week, the counts shift by a day at the edges but the shape of a heavy or light week does not. The small figure under the count is how many of those games fall on a light night, a date when the league as a whole plays fewer games than your threshold, which is eight unless you change it in the control above the grid. The last column counts the club's back-to-backs inside the window, two games on consecutive nights, and the dates themselves are listed below the grid so you can see which nights are worth a pickup.
The weekday letters, and the back-to-back hiding in them
Under each count sits a row of letters, one per game, for the days that club plays: M W F S is a Monday, a Wednesday, a Friday and a Saturday. Two letters side by side, like F S, are a back-to-back, and that is where goalies come in. Most clubs split a back-to-back between their two goalies, one start for the number one and one for the backup, so a four-game week with two back-to-backs in it can mean only two starts for the goalie you drafted in round three. The grid does not know which night is which; the club announces that at the morning skate. What it gives you is the shape, so that when your pool starts two goalies and one of yours is on a club with three back-to-backs this week, you know to look at your second goalie's schedule before Monday rather than after.
Streaming on a light night
The nights list under the grid names every date in the window where the league plays fewer games than your threshold, with the league-wide count and which of your chosen clubs play. That is a streaming calendar. When only six or eight clubs dress, the free agents on those clubs are the only skaters who can put a number in your open seat that night, so a third-line winger on one of them is worth more than a first-liner sitting at home. In a pool with daily lineup changes, which is the default on both major platforms, you can rotate a bench seat through those nights all week. In a pool that locks lineups for the whole week, the count column is the only column that matters, because a player either plays four times or he does not, and no amount of Tuesday tinkering changes it.
Where the week begins and ends
Every fantasy week here runs from Monday at midnight Eastern to the end of Sunday, and a game belongs to the Eastern calendar date it starts on. A 10:30 pm puck drop on the west coast is a 1:30 am start in the east and counts on the next day, which occasionally moves a Sunday game into Monday's week; games played overseas count on their local date. The season has 28 of these weeks, and two of them are worth marking now. The week that holds the all-star break in early February is light for every club at once, so the grid goes red across the board and there is nobody to stream. The week after the trade deadline at the start of March is when line sheets change most, so a four-game week for a club that just added a winger is worth a second look when the line sheets arrive in season.
What this page does not do
It does not project points, and it does not know your roster. It answers one question, how many times each club takes the ice, and leaves the judgement to you. A four-game week for a club with a weak power play is still four games; a two-game week for a club with the league's best first line is still two. The clubs you pick, the threshold, the playoff weeks and the two players you compare are all written into the address, so a link to this page carries your grid to anyone in the group chat. The compare seats under the nights list take two players from the directory and show, week by week, the nights each one's club plays and the nights both do: those are the nights a shared bench seat has to choose, and the fewer of them the better the pair. The playoff-weeks chip swaps the window for your league's playoff weeks, the last three of the season unless you set your own, with a total column, because a club on eleven games across those weeks is worth more to you in March than its ranking says. Read it beside the goalie guide for the tandem call and the board for the player-level value.
The schedule is read from the league's published calendar and refreshed on our own feed. If it is not available the page says so rather than showing a stale grid.