SCORESHEET FANTASY HOCKEY: ADDITIONAL RULES
Free Agent Drafts and Depth Charts
During the Scoresheet Fantasy Hockey regular season, weekly free agent drafts are conducted. Each week of the season, every team can pick up a free agent (but must also drop one player to do so). Teams will pick in the reverse order of the standings at that time. Each week's free agent draft is held before that week's games are played, and you can use the free agent pickup that week if you desire.
You may list 14 starters and up to 13 backups on your depth chart. Unlisted players on your roster will be used as final backups according to player number order. This is useful for recently drafted free agents, and for plugging holes in your lineup if you are particularly thin at a position. You are permitted to list free agents on your depth chart, in hopes of actually acquiring and immediately playing them. However, free agent players will play for you only if you successfully drafted them - otherwise they'll simply be skipped over on game day, and your next eligible player will be used for a given position, if necessary.
All depth chart changes, trades, and free agent pickups are free! You must submit your depth chart through your league's webpage (or postmark, fax or e-mail, if necessary) your depth chart and free agent draft list by/before 4:00 p.m. (Pacific time) on the Monday of the week that you want it used (BEFORE any NHL games begin that week. A Scoresheet hockey week runs Monday through Sunday). This is a game where you PREDICT how your players will do - you need to set your starters and the line they are on before you see how they do that week in the NHL. However, you are NOT required to turn in a new depth chart each week. Once you submit a depth chart, it stays in effect until you make a change. Even if you are turning in a free agent draft list, but not changing your depth chart, you still must have your list submitted by the Monday deadline to have it used in that week's free agent draft - predicting who will have a good week is a big part of the game!
Please call the Scoresheet office as soon as possible if, for some reason, you've missed a draft deadline. Unfortunately, we can not do anything about Scoresheet-bound depth charts that have become lost in the mail - once games are played, they are final. However, if the Postal Service loses your weekly results, we'll gladly mail you a new copy.
Trading
Trading of players is allowed through mid-February. However, you can NOT trade away future free agent draft rights. (Once you draft a player you can trade him, but you can not trade future free agent picks!) Scoresheet staff monitors all trades for fairness. Naturally, we need to receive trade approval from BOTH owners involved before we can put a trade into effect. Trades should be reported through the league webpage.
Conferences and Playoffs
A 12 team league is split into two 6-team conferences. In each conference, the top 3 finishers make the playoffs. Regular-season games that are decided by 0.20 points or less will be declared ties. The standings are determined just as in the NHL: wins are worth 2 points, ties are worth one point. (Ties for conference winners and playoff spots are broken using the season's game points scored.)
Scoresheet Hockey playoffs consist of three 3-game series. During the first week of the playoffs, the 2nd place finisher in each conference plays the 3rd place finisher in that conference, with the 2nd place team at home for Games 1 and 3 (wild-card game). In Week 2 of the playoffs, the conference winner plays the winner of that conference's wild-card game, with the conference winner at home in Games 1 and 3. The finals are played between the playoff winners from each conference, with the team with the better record getting the home-ice advantage in Games 1 and 3, unless a conference winner plays a wild-card team, in which case the conference winner will have the home-ice advantage. The home team is given a 0.3 point home-ice advantage in each playoff game.
In addition to the home-ice advantage, Scoresheet also awards 'bonus points' to the team in each playoff series which has the better regular season record. Rather than having the playoffs based solely on what happens only in that week in the NHL, we feel there should be some additional importance given to season-long records. As a result, in each playoff matchup, the team with the better Scoresheet regular season record will get an additional 0.03 'bonus points' for every point in the standings that the team finished ahead of the team it is playing. (A standings point is figured just as in the NHL - a win is worth 2 points, a tie is worth 1 point.) For example, if your team finished 20 standings points ahead of the team you are playing in a playoff series, you'll get 0.6 bonus points in each of the three games. These bonus points are combined with the home-ice points. In the example above, a team finishing 20 standings points ahead of its opponent would have a total advantage of 0.9 points in Games 1 and 3 (0.6 for the bonus points plus 0.3 for home-ice), and an advantage of only 0.3 in the second game (0.6 bonus points minus the 0.3 home-ice advantage the other team gets in Game 2.) This rule means that every regular season victory matters, even if you have your playoff spot clinched, since your bonus points potentially increase with each win!
The one league winner with the highest game point total in all of Scoresheet Hockey (not including the playoff games) wins a free year's worth of franchise fees in all three Scoresheet Sports games: football, baseball and hockey. (Only teams in leagues with at least 12 teams are eligible for this prize, though trophies are awarded in all leagues. Also, all conference winners not winning their league will receive certificates.)
