How Does Fantasy Hockey Work?

By

Jeremy Roach

What is Weekly Fantasy Hockey with OwnersBox?

OwnersBox is excited to introduce our new weekly fantasy hockey contests live now on our platform. Contests are played over a 7-day period and are available to enter on Saturday.

Fantasy hockey gives people the opportunity to put together their best fantasy teams and compete. Most fantasy hockey leagues are either Tournament style or Head-2-Head contests.

Users assemble a 10-player roster consisting of five forwards, three defense players, and two goalies. You accumulate points throughout the contest which include goals, assists, shots on goal, blocked shots, and plus/minus.

In Tournament games, users will build a 10-player lineup while staying under the $200,000 salary cap. Salaries are assigned to each player with the number of games played over the 7-days indicated in the lineup builder. With this in mind, game strategy will play a role in the player selection process under this format, with some players having two games played and others with four over the week. Therefore, users will have to keep an eye on the game limitations per position. Going over the limits in any position will trigger the ‘best ball’ feature. When ‘best ball’ is active, only the best scoring games within your game opportunities will be scored, while the lower ones are dropped.

Users can participate in a live snake draft to select their team. Contests can feature anywhere from 2 to 16 participants and last anywhere from 1 to 4 weeks. Entrants participate in a single-elimination bracket-style contest. Prizes are paid out weekly, with the contest winner taking the majority of the prize pool.

While there are many different forms of Fantasy Hockey, here are some key features that make OwnersBox unique:

Contests are available to play every day.
Receive player news notifications after your lineups are built.
Users have the ability to swap players throughout the week. When swapping a player, 20% of the remaining salary from the player you’re dropping will be deducted from the available salary to be used towards a new player.
A goalie set to backup will not consume Game Opportunities or salary. If they appear during a game, their fantasy points will not count.
Going over the game limit will automatically trigger the Best Ball feature. When Best Ball is active, only the best scoring games within your Game Opportunities will be scored, while the lowest ones are dropped.

What is a Head-To-Head Fantasy Hockey Contest?

Fantasy hockey has two popular formats, which include Head-2-Head matchups and Tournament Salary Cap. Head-2-Head enables you to draft your own unique team and compete against one other user over 7 days in a bracket-style competition. The roster is selected through a live draft.

For some leagues, this means using a Snake Draft format, where the order of who picks/drafts are reversed each round. For example, Round 1 will have the draft order as User 1, User 2, User 3, User 4. And Round 2 will have the draft order as User 4, User 3, User 2, User 1.

Each Head-2-Head contest gives players a fair chance of filling their rosters with a good set of players and each contestant will have their own unique team (since no player can be drafted by multiple contestants, and rosters are not pre-determined). Each contestant has one minute to pick their players. If a decision isn’t made within this time limit, a player is auto-drafted.

Pro Tip: By adding players to your queue, a player from this list will be auto-drafted if you reach your time limit.

Our draft also provides users the option to auto-pick every selection. If you’re a beginner and are new to Fantasy Sports, this feature could be useful for you. The OwnersBox auto-pick option drafts the best available player based on points projection for the remaining roster spots you need to fill for your team. This can also be used for someone who is unable to be present for their entire draft.

You can also swap and bench players throughout the course of the week. If a player on your team becomes inactive, you have the option to swap them out without consuming a swap.

Game Opportunities are an important part of Head-2-Head contests. While your 10-player roster will accumulate points for you over a 7-day period, they might not accumulate points for every game they play in. Your team is allowed a specific number of games per week, per position, to accumulate points. These points are referred to as Game Opportunities.

Below are the Game Opportunities listed below by position.

Forwards – 16 game opportunities
Defense – 10 game opportunities
Goalies – 4 game opportunities

You get to choose which games your players accumulate points in to maximize your score.

As you play and make changes to your team, pay attention to the Game Opportunities on the far right side of your OwnersBox dashboard. And make sure to maximize your games to earn as many Fantasy Points each week as possible.

Game Opportunities are an important part of Head-2-Head contests. While your 10-player roster will accumulate points for you over a 7-day period, they might not accumulate points for every game they play in. Your team is allowed a specific number of games per week, per position, to accumulate points. These points are referred to as Game Opportunities.

Below are the Game Opportunities listed below by position.

Forwards – 16 game opportunities
Defense – 10 game opportunities
Goalies – 4 game opportunities

You get to choose which games your players accumulate points in to maximize your score.

As you play and make changes to your team, pay attention to the Game Opportunities on the far right side of your OwnersBox dashboard. And make sure to maximize your games to earn as many Fantasy Points each week as possible.

What is a Tournament Contest?

At OwnersBox our Tournament contest allows contestants to submit up to 10 different rosters and compete over 7 days against up to 1,000 other submissions. These contests have higher prizes and payout to the top 25% of submitted rosters.

If you are participating in our Tournament style game, you will select 10 players while staying within your allotted salary cap ($200,000). Simply find the player you want from the player list, and add them to your team.

Pro Tip: When adding a player, make sure to keep your overall salary in mind. Choose too many high-end Forwards and you might leave yourself short when choosing the other roster positions you need to fill.

Activating and benching your players is not something you are regularly required to do. However, there are rare occasions where you may be required to activate or bench a specific roster position. This will only occur when the projected games for a roster player you have selected increase after your roster has been submitted. Typically this will happen for Goalies if they are scheduled to be the backup, but are moved to the starter for that specific game. If this occurs, it will be up to the user to select which game they want to bench their player for. By default, any added games are set to having the player benched.

An important feature of the Tournament style contest is Best Ball. Your players will accumulate points in every game they play, unless Best Ball is activated. If Best Ball is activated, your roster will accumulate points in the best overall games they play based on the number of Game Opportunities you have.

Game Opportunities are listed below.

Forwards – 16 game opportunities
Defense – 10 game opportunities
Goalies – 4 game opportunities

How To Join a Fantasy Hockey League?

Joining a fantasy hockey league is easy.

Choose Your Contest.

Select either Tournament or Head-2-Head.

Pick your Players.

Manage Your Team, Watch and Win.

Live alerts and player stats help you stay on top of your contest.

Get Started

How to draft fantasy hockey?

When choosing your roster for either our Tournament style contests or Head-2-Head contests, your NHL team Roster will be made up of the following positions (for a total of 10 players total):

5 Forwards (F)

3 Defense (D)

2 Goalies (G)

If a player’s position changes after the draft or contest creation, the player’s positions will be set when the contest is created (in Tournament contests) or at the start of the contest’s draft (Head-2-Head) and will stay that position for the duration of the contest. If a player’s position changes after the contest have been created then only new contests will have that player’s new position.

How does fantasy hockey scoring work?

Scoring in fantasy hockey works as follows:

Skaters
Goal	10 points
Assist	5 points
Shots on Goal	1 point
Blocked shots	1 point
Plus/Minus (the plus-minus is a multiple of this) i.e your player finishes with a -2 rating (-2x2 points) = -4 points	2 points

Goalies
Save	1 point
Goals Against	-5 points
Win	10 points
Shut Out	5 points

Scoring systems might vary slightly among leagues, but most will include the above-mentioned features.

For Tournament contest ties, the prizes will be split between the two users who tie. This means if two people tie for the contest, they will split the total sum of the 1st place and 2nd place prize.

For Head-2-Head contest ties, a randomizer will determine at the end of the draft who you will be matched up against for the first round. The randomizer also assigns a gold coin that represents who wins in the event of a tie.

How To Manage Your Fantasy Hockey Team on OwnersBox

In Tournament contests, you can process as many swaps as you wish to your line-up, but each swap will cost a penalty fee (20%) of the dropped players remaining salary. If a player is injured, you will not be charged the swap fee.

In Head-2-Head contests, you are allowed to swap a maximum of two (2) players per week. If you win your Head-2-Head (H2H) for the week and advance (in 4, 8, 16 team contests), your swaps will be refreshed and you will get two new swaps.

Tips for Fantasy Hockey Beginners

When it comes to playing fantasy hockey as a beginner, we recommend checking out the following tips:

Familiarize yourself with top players in the NHL. Learn which players are the best (or which ones you think are the best) and try to pick those. It seems like an obvious tip but doing some research before your first draft can go a long way.
Utilize the OwnersBox queue feature. There’s nothing worse than running out of time when selecting your players in the draft and getting stuck with a random player when the auto-draft kicks in. By adding players to your queue ahead of time, the auto-draft feature will pick from that list, putting you in a better position to draft players you prefer.
Know the difference between contests. Tournament and Head-2-Head contests are different in some pretty significant ways. Just like you want to research players in the league before the draft, you should also familiarize yourself with these two contests.

Ready to Play Fantasy Hockey?

OwnersBox is an innovative sports-tech company disrupting the way consumers play fantasy hockey. We’re passionate about building a best-in-class fantasy sports platform that will provide a superior experience to millions of hockey fans worldwide.

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