IFHL Hockey Pool Rules

The IFHL Hockey pool is a perpetual pool with a points-based scoring system and a yearly supplemental draft. That is, IFHL teams keep the same players from year to year, with a draft held once per year to enlist currently unowned players. Trading is allowed and encouraged. There is a maximum number of players, and there is a salary cap. If you win, there is a handsome trophy that you keep for the year, and you get some damn good bragging rights. Currently there are 13 teams in the league.

2. Roster Size

• Maximum roster size is set at 22 players.
• Roster size is not enforced in the off-season.
• If a team exceeds the maximum roster size during the regular season for any reason, the team has 3 days to reduce their roster to the maximum. If they do not do so, enough players are automatically dropped to get the team under the limit, starting with the lowest paid player.

• The salary cap is calculated as follows: "roster size" times "cap average player cost". "Cap average player cost" is calculated by taking the average salary of the top (N + 95) highest paid players in the NHL, where N is the number of available roster spots in the hockey pool (currently 13 times 22 = 286 spots).
• All salary cap calculations are done in U.S. dollars. Any players who are paid in Canadian dollars will have their salaries converted to U.S. dollars at a fixed exchange rate decided at the start of every season.
• The official source for player salary information is the NHL Numbers web site
• The salary number used is the player's official salary cap hit.
• If there is no salary listed for a player in the official web site, the player's salary is considered to be the player's last known official salary. If the player has never been listed on the official site, the player's salary will be set to the NHL minimum salary, which is currently $700,000.
• If a player has not been playing in the NHL for two years or more, and are not listed on the NHLPA website, their salary will be considered to be the league minimum.
• The salary cap is not enforced in the off-season.
• The salary cap is fixed at the draft, and will not change again until the season finishes.
• If a team goes over the salary cap due to players changing salaries, the team has 2 weeks in which arrange to get back under the cap. If the team does not do so, enough players are dropped to get the team under the cap, starting with the most expensive players.
• If a team goes over the salary cap for any other reason, the team has 3 days in which arrange to get back under the cap. If the team does not do so, enough players are dropped to get the team under the cap, starting with the most expensive players.
• There is a time-out period on salary cap enforcement from the day before Christmas until the day after New Years Day.

• Trades are allowed at any time.
• Trading of draft picks and players is allowed. Trading of "cap room" or money is not. When a player is traded, the players entire salary is traded also.
• Official binding conditions are only allowed on draft picks, and they must be worded in such as way as to be resolvable by the end of the regular season. Conditions on players or "future considerations" are not binding in any way, and are to be discouraged in general.
• Any trade, which in the unanimous opinion of all non-involved parties is abusive or harmfully unbalanced, can be vetoed. If it is not vetoed within 1 week of the general announcement of trade, it is considered permanent.
• You only get points for games played by a player after the official trade has occurred. Any games played by the player before the trade count for the previous team.

• At each forward position (left wing, centre and right wing), you count 3 times N "games" from your players (where N is the number of games in the regular season, currently 82). Order players by the points-per-game that they have scored while on your team (highest ppg first). Starting with the highest ranked player, add all of the points scored by that player to your total points, and add the total games played by the player to your games counted. Continue until you have a player who has played more games for you than you have counting games available. In this case, multiply the player's ppg times the number of available counting games, and add that to your total points.
• For the defence position, you count 4 times N "games", with N defined as above, and scoring done as above.
• For goaltenders, their goals-against are subtracted from your totals. Exactly N goalie games are counted this way (where N is defined as above). To calculate this, take the best goalies' goals-against-average, and multiply it by the official number of games played, and subtract it off the total points. Continue this until you have a goalie who has more games played than you need to count games, and multiply their GAA by the number of games left to count.
• If you do not have enough goalie games, a backup goalie named Joe Smallpuck will play for your team. He has a goals-against average which is 2 worse than the worst goalie in the entire pool.
• If a player is traded away and then traded back again, this is treated as two separate "players" for the purposes of points ranking
• The official source of player position information is the NHL web site.
• If the pool player position for a player doesn't match the current official player position, an owner can change the player's position to match the NHL at any time. If this change in position occurs during the season, for the purposes of scoring the player is treated as being traded away from the old position and traded back to the new position.
• Positions changes can occur any time after the end of the regular season up until the start of the draft, at which point they are again frozen

• The supplemental draft is held once per year, as close to the start of the season as possible.
• Draft picks are assigned in reverse order by previous year's standings, i.e. last place gets the first pick overall, second last gets the second pick overall, etc.
• People get as many picks as they need to bring their roster up to the maximum roster size, and no more. This means that later rounds in the draft will be shorter, as not everyone will have picks.
• Draft picks in future drafts are a commodity that can be traded.
• One week before the supplemental draft, a ban on dropping players goes into effect. The purpose of this is to force everyone who wants to drop players to do it early, and thus make draft planning easier. The ban on dropping players is removed the day after the draft
• Any player who is old enough to be drafted by the NHL and not currently owned by an IFHL team is eligible for the draft.

• The prize for first place is the "Randall cup", a wood and silver trophy made and kindly donated by Ross Randall. The winner gets to keep the trophy, and show it off to all during the year. The trophy is presented at the supplemental draft.
• There are no monetary prizes, just bragging rights, which the winner is expected to use repeatedly.
• People ending in the top three positions every year get "medals" recorded on the web site. As well, there is a "pool points" system to keep track of relative performance year over year. First place gets 6 pool points, second gets 5 pool points, down to 6th which gets 1 pool point. Last place gets a negative pool point.