Be a GM, 2026-27

Take over your favourite team and run it: trade, call players up, mind the cap and play out the season. Or build a team of your own. You have $104M of cap space and 1182 players under contract to pick from. Dress 12 forwards, 6 defencemen and 2 goalies, keep up to 3 spares, and stock a farm team. This is the season being played, so each player is rated on his last three seasons, as a full season of each and the newest counting most, and counts his 2026-27 cap hit. How it works

Be the GM of your team Make a trade

Or start a team of your own: add players one by one from the list, or and work from there.

Your lineup

Forward lines

Defence pairs

Goalies

Spares count against the cap

Farm team

Long-term injured reserve

Injured reserve

Dead cap

Draft picks

Find players

Name Position Team Cap hit up to Order

Your hypothetical season

How the team you have built would do, whether you started from a real team, built one from nothing or made trades. Every other team dresses the twenty it uses most, yours dresses the lineup above, and the season is played a thousand times over. It needs a team the league would let play: a full lineup of twenty, under the cap, with no more than 50 contracts. How the simulation works

Contract outlook

What the team you have built is committed to, by the summer each contract runs out. Pick a real team above to see where it stands.

How it works

The cap: The players you dress and your spares count their whole cap hit. A player on the farm team counts only what his cap hit is above $1.225M (the lowest salary plus $375K), so a big contract cannot be hidden there. The bar turns red when you are over $104M.
Retained salary and dead cap: When a team trades a player it may keep paying part of his contract. He then costs his new team less than his cap hit, which is what he costs here, and he is marked "retained". The part his old team kept is dead cap: money that counts against its cap for a player who is gone, as a buyout does. A real team loads with the dead cap known for it, which counts until you clear it.
Running a real team: Once you pick a team to be the GM of, you play by its rules. A player under contract to another team cannot simply be added: his button reads "Trade for", and it opens a trade with the team that has him. Your own players, including any you release, can be signed back, and so can a free agent. A team built from nothing, with no team picked, may still add anyone.
Free agents: The free agents, as of Oct 7, 2026, are the players who had a contract last season, have none now and are with no team. Press "Free agents" above the list to see them. Each asks what the market pays for a player like him, the going price of his rating over his last three seasons and never less than the lowest salary, for one season. That asking price is the site's own, not a real offer. The league shows no team for a player who has retired or gone to play in Europe just as for one waiting on an offer, so some of these would not really sign. A restricted free agent who has not signed, such as one holding out, is listed with the team that holds his rights and marked "unsigned": only that team can sign him, he is on no roster until it does, and he cannot be traded for here.
Trades: Pick a team under "Make a trade" at the top, or pick one in the list's Team filter and press "Trade with this team". Choose who you give and who you get, and the page shows both teams' cap and rating before and after, and whether the other team would say yes. It says yes when it gets back at least as much value as it gives and stays under its cap. A player's value is what his last three seasons were worth above what he costs, the newer ones counting more, counted over the seasons left on his contract, up to four, each later one counting a little less; a bad contract has a value below zero. A skater's seasons are moved along with his age: over 2018-19 to 2025-26 a skater gained about a goal a year at 19 and 20, levelled off at 24 and lost half a goal to a goal a year from his late twenties on, so a young player on a long contract is worth more than his past says and an older one less. Goalies are left as they are. The league's genuine stars cost more than that, with a lean toward the young ones: a skater among the thirty best in the league by rating, or among the sixty best when he is 25 or under. A team that means to keep its star treats him as untouchable and will only move him for his full price: it asks the whole of what he does on the ice is worth over the rest of his contract, whatever he is paid, so a franchise player on a dear contract cannot be had for nothing. A young star is counted for four seasons however soon his contract ends, since his team keeps his rights. But keeping a star is not always in a team's interest. When his contract runs out this summer and he could leave for nothing, a team in the race (one of the sixteen best by rating) would listen, and asks his plain value plus half of the gap up to that full price; a team out of the race is selling, and asks his plain value plus a quarter of it. A team out of the race would also listen on a star with two seasons left, or one who is 32 or older. A star is marked with a star beside his name when he is another team's: red when he is untouchable, amber when his team would listen, green when it is selling, with why and what is asked on hover. The site cannot know when a player wants out. Everyone else goes for his plain value. These are rules of the site's own. This is a simple yardstick: it cannot value a prospect with no rating, it knows nothing of where a player was drafted or what a team needs, and it is only as good as the rating. You can make a trade it would refuse. A player you trade away can be traded for again; Undo reverses a trade.
Keeping salary in a trade: Beside each player you give is a choice to keep a quarter or half of his cap hit. He then costs the other team less, which makes him worth more to them and helps him fit under their cap, and what you keep counts against your own cap as dead cap. The league's limits apply: no more than half of a cap hit, on at most 3 contracts at once, and no more than 15% of the cap in all, counting salary the team you started from already keeps. A trade past those limits cannot be made. In the league the kept share runs for the rest of the contract; here it is counted for this season. The other team keeping salary on a player you get is not offered.
Goalies: A goalie's rating counts for 24% of what it says here. Goalies are hard to tell ahead of time: over 2021-22 to 2025-26 a skater's rating carried over from one season to the next (a correlation of 0.63) and a goalie's did not (0.02), yet goalies' ratings are spread nearly three times as wide, so left alone they would fill the top of the list and decide every lineup. The weight is what a goalie's goal turned out to be worth in team points beside a skater's: 70% within a season, 24% when it is told from the season before. It applies to the rating, the lineup's total, the best team under the cap and the simulation. What a goalie is worth in dollars is unchanged, since teams already pay far less for a goalie's goal. His own page shows his rating as it is.
Defence: The even-strength defence part of a rating counts for 17% of what it says here for a forward and 100% for a defenceman, whose job it is. It is the part of the rating that says least about winning: over 2021-22 to 2025-26 a goal of it was worth 53% of a goal of even-strength offence in team points within a season, and 17% told from the season before. It also drops steadily with ice time (forwards who play under 12 minutes a game average +1.3 goals a season, those over 20 minutes -1.3) and is lower on weak teams, so at full weight it marks down first-line players, who face the other team's best, and anyone on a bad team. The rest of a skater's rating is as it is on his own page.
Finding attackers and defenders: A player's rating adds up everything he does, so a defender who gives little on offence rates modestly however good he is in his own end. To look at one side of the game, press "Best attackers" or "Best defenders" above the list, or order it by "Best offence" or "Best defence": the list then shows an Off or a Def column in place of rating per $1M. Off is the goals a skater created at even strength and on the power play, and Def the goals he kept out at even strength and on the penalty kill, each at full weight over a full season, measured against an average player. They are parts of his rating, not ratings of their own, and Def is the least steady part from year to year.
Rating a season still to be played: This season has barely begun, so a player's rating here is a forecast, not a record: his last three seasons, each as a full season of 82 games, the newest counting three times, the one before twice and the one before that once. A season of fewer than 41 games is spread over 41, so a hot month is not taken for a year. Over 2021-22 to 2025-26 this told the next season's standings better than last season's total alone, and it means a player who missed half of last season is not rated as if that were all he is. His own page still shows each season as it was.
The hypothetical season: A trade changes both teams: the players and picks you give now belong to the other team, in its lineup, its cap and its later trades, and you can trade for them back. That altered league is your hypothetical season. It is saved in this browser under a name from your first trade on, and kept up to date as you go; you can keep several and open any of them. Nothing is saved on the site, so another browser or computer will not have them, though a copied link still carries one.
Simulating the season: Once twenty players are dressed, press "Simulate the season" at the top at any time; no trade is needed. Each team's strength is the goals above replacement of the twenty players it dresses: yours as you set them, every other team the twenty it used most among those it has after your trades. A game between two teams is a weighted coin toss, the stronger team's chance growing with the gap, and about 22 games in 100 go to overtime, where the loser gets a point. The games are the real schedule, with the home team given the edge it has had (it wins 53.7% of the time): in the season being played, the games still to come on top of the results so far; in a finished season, every game from the first. A team built from nothing has no schedule, so everyone then plays 82 games against opponents drawn evenly. The season is run 1,000 times. The weights were measured on 2021-22 to 2025-26: a lineup's rating from the season before told where a team would finish to within about 12 points, so a team's strength is also moved up or down a little each run for what the rating cannot see (injuries, a hot goalie, a rookie). Read the range, not just the average. Injuries are played too: in each run every dressed skater misses a share of the season drawn from what regulars really missed over those five seasons (16.5% on average; one in four missed more than a quarter of it), and the two goalies together likewise. A missing player's games go to the best spare or farm player at his position, the longest absence to the best of them; with nobody there, or nobody better than a replacement-level player, those games are worth nothing. A player counts for what he did in each game he played, so one who was hurt last season is taken to be back. A playoff place is the real format: the top three in each division and two wild cards in each conference. A team built from nothing joins as a 33rd team and needs a top-sixteen finish.
Draft picks: A team you start from brings its real draft picks for the drafts on record, including the ones it got from other teams and without the ones it traded away. Picks can go either way in a trade. A pick's value is the site's own yardstick: a set amount for its round, more when it comes from a weak team (which picks early) and a little less for a draft further off. A pick with a condition that is not settled yet is shown but cannot be traded here. Who holds each pick comes from Wikipedia's pages on each draft, as they stood on the day shown.
Waivers and the farm team: A team cannot simply send a player to the minors. Unless he is exempt it must first put him on waivers, where for a day any other team may claim him and keep him, the team with the worst record first. A young player is exempt for a number of seasons after his first contract, or until he has played a number of NHL games, whichever comes first: five seasons or 160 games for a skater who signed at 18, down to two seasons or 60 games for one who signed at 24, and a little longer for a goalie. An 18 or 19 year old who plays 11 games in a season is exempt for only three seasons from then. A player who signed at 25 or older is not exempt. Each player on the farm team is marked exempt or as needing waivers, as of the start of the season, with the reason when you hover over it. One who is worth more than he costs is marked at risk: a real team would likely lose him to a claim. Sending one of those down asks you first; say yes and he goes down all the same, since nobody here can claim him.
The 50 contracts: A team may have at most 50 players under contract at once, counting everyone: the lineup, the spares, the farm team and the injured. The count is shown beside the farm team and turns red past the limit. The league leaves out some teenagers sent back to junior hockey, which is not done here.
Injured reserve: A team carries at most 23 healthy players: the 20 it dresses and up to three spares, who are paid and count against the cap in full whether they play or not. A player who is hurt can be put on injured reserve (IR), which frees his spot among the 23 but changes nothing on the cap: he still counts his whole cap hit. A real team loads with its players on injured reserve already there.
Long-term injured reserve: A player put on long-term injured reserve (LTIR) still counts his cap hit, but the team may go over the cap to cover for him. If he is expected back this season that room is his cap hit or $3.973M, whichever is less; mark him out for the year and it is his whole cap hit. A real team is set out from its actual roster as of Oct 8, 2026: the players with the big club are dressed or kept as spares, and everyone else under contract is on the farm. Players really on LTIR or injured reserve as of Oct 6, 2026 are marked, and a real team loads with its LTIR players already there.
The rating: Goals above replacement: the goals a player added to his team's goal difference, compared with a spare-part player given the same ice time. About six are worth a win. Your team's rating is the twenty you dress added up, and it is set beside the real teams' ranked players. Until this season's players have enough games to be ranked, the ratings are last season's.
Value: What a season like his cost teams on average, less his cap hit. A big plus is a bargain.
Diamonds in the rough: Cheap players who did a great deal with the ice time they got: a cap hit of no more than $1.66M, a rating for each 60 minutes in the top quarter of the position, at least 200 minutes played (600 for a goalie), and, for a skater, no more ice time a game than most. They are marked with a diamond. A small sample can flatter a player, so look at his page before you build around him.
The best team: The twenty players, 12 forwards, 6 defencemen and 2 goalies, with the most goals above replacement that fit under the cap, chosen from the 913 players with enough games to be ranked. Every way of splitting the money between the three groups is tried. It is built as a whole organisation, not only those twenty: three spares (a forward, a defenceman and one more skater), a farm team of 10 who cost nothing against the cap there and can be sent down without waivers, and cap room kept free for 2 call-ups, since a player who is hurt still counts his cap hit while the man replacing him is added. Nobody on an injured list now is dressed. So the twenty are a little weaker than the money alone would buy, as a real team's are.
Who is missing: Only players whose contract is known can be picked. Contracts are gathered from public collections and news reports, so some players are missing, more of them the further back the season.