How to play — Hockey

Hockey is a depth game before it is a star game. You are filling a dressing room — forwards, defence and goaltending — and the run is decided as often in February as it is in a Cup final.

The board

12 seats: C1 · C2 · LW · RW · F-FLEX1 · F-FLEX2 · D1 · D2 · D3 · D-FLEX · G1 · G2. Four forward slots, three on defence and two goaltenders. The goalies are the reason this board plays differently from every other: a season in net cannot be judged by the same numbers as a season on the wing, so those two seats need their own read.

The rounds

Each round opens one club's dressing room from a specific stretch of years. The record starts in 1917, when six clubs carried the entire league, so a spin can hand you a roster from a competition a quarter the size of today's.

The season

82 games, then a 16-game playoff gauntlet at 67 wins — 98–0 for the sweep. Eighty-two games and then sixteen playoff wins to lift the Cup — ninety-eight results, all of which have to go your way. Hockey finds a thin third line eventually, and the night a run dies is far more often a flat road game than anything in a final.

• 98–0 — the perfect season.
• 90 wins or more — the top tier.
• 75 or more — a strong finish.
• 67 or more — you reached the playoffs.
• 32 or more — middling.
• the rest — the roast comes with the verdict.

What the record holds

The record starts in 1917 and holds 444 hall-of-fame figures, running from the six-club years through every expansion since. Because the league quadrupled in size across that span, two spins on the same badge can hand you competitions with almost nothing in common — which is why the era a round deals matters as much as the crest on it.

What decides it

Hockey names its trophies precisely, and that is useful: the Hart, the Vezina and the Calder each describe a different kind of season, so one honour tells you what sort of player you are actually looking at. How the ratings work · the full rulebook.

Take a hockey board The hockey game