Roster

Your roster is every player under contract with your club: the players you dress, the ones you scratch, the injured, those on injured reserve and those you have assigned to your affiliate. Its limits are 20 and 30 players. An injured player can go on injured reserve, which takes his salary off your cap until you activate him. On your team’s Home, Roster rankings follow your next game and the standings, and rate your roster against the other clubs in your league.

Reading your roster

Open Roster on your team page. Table lines the players up in rows, so you can compare them column by column; Cards shows a card for each player. On your own club, Depth lays out your lineup. Breakdown shows everything behind the rankings: fit, every attribute, each position’s figures, ages, depth and contracts.

The number beside Roster counts the players listed. The Display menu changes how they are listed:

• Group by sorts them into Position groups (Centers, Forwards, Defensemen, Goalies), by League rating (his rating out of five in the club’s league, best first, then Not rated), by Fitness (the most worn first, so the tired players lead), by Happiness (the least happy first), by Contract years (the seasons left on his current deal, the soonest first; an extension he has agreed does not move him), by Trade Status, by Profile (DISC), or as one list with None.
• View, in Table only, chooses the columns: Info, Contracts, Profiles or Ratings.
• Download CSV, on your own roster, saves the roster as a spreadsheet file.

In Table, click a column header to sort the whole roster by that column; this drops the grouping, and picking a grouping again brings it back.

What each view shows:

• Info — age, Overall, nationality, role, height, weight, the hand he shoots or catches with, and Condition. Condition shows his fitness, confidence and happiness as three small signs that stay grey while all is well; one that is off takes a color, and on a wider screen its word appears beside it, such as Tired or Concerned. Role, hand and Condition appear only on a wider screen; on a phone his fitness shows beside his name.
• Contracts — reputation, trade status, salary, years left, the contract’s clause and whether it is one-way or two-way, and happiness. On a wider screen a thin bar under each salary measures it against the roster’s largest. Trade status and clause show only when one is set, and happiness shows its word only when he isn’t happy. Contracts are explained on player contracts.
• Profiles — the six personality traits, his persona, culture fit and winner instinct; see player personality.
• Ratings — Overall and every attribute, with goalies under their own header. Every attribute shows in its rating color; for a skater with a role, the attributes his role rests on sit on a light plate, so you can see at a glance whether he is strong where his role needs it; see player ratings, player roles and goalie ratings.

His rating out of five in the club’s league sits at the bottom right of his card, and in every Table view right after his name (as one star and the number on a phone). It is the same rating his player page shows; a player whose position has only a few players in that league has none. See how he rates in his league.

A card shows his Overall, position, role, age, height, weight and nationality, his season line, the attributes his role rests on, his salary, and, with his Overall, the word for what is off in his condition, such as Tired or Concerned (the worst one when several are; nothing while all is well). The season line counts his regular-season games for this club this season, laid out as on his player panel: games played, goals, assists, points and plus-minus for a skater, and games played, wins, goals-against average, save percentage and shutouts for a goalie; a dash means he hasn’t played a regular-season game for the club yet. Beside the salary are the years left on his contract and his role. His jersey number sits large behind the card, and a captain or assistant wears his C or A as a patch in the club’s color. On a phone a card is shorter and leaves out the number, the season line and the attributes. Confidence and happiness are on player form and happiness, roles on player roles, and fitness on lineup.

The markers beside a name:

• C and A — the captain and his assistants; see team spirit and focus.
• 1L to 4L, 1D to 3D, PP, PK, GK1, GK2 — on your own roster, the line, pair and special-teams units he plays on, or starting and backup goalie. Hide lineup assignments in Preferences turns these off.
• WV, IR or INJ — on waivers, on injured reserve, or injured. A player shows only one, in that order. Its tooltip gives the long form; for an injury, the type and how many days he is still out. On a phone they shorten to W, IR and I.
• The affiliate’s league, or AA on a phone — he is assigned to your affiliate.

A faded row or card is a player assigned to your affiliate or in a trade that is going through. On a card, an orange ring marks a player on waivers and a red ring one on injured reserve, and while he is hurt INJ shows at the foot of the card and no condition word shows by his Overall. On a phone, in every view, a player who isn’t fully fit shows his fitness word beside his name.

Players assigned to your affiliate are listed under their own heading below the roster. Turn on Display affiliate assignments in Preferences to keep them in the main list. The affiliate is explained on affiliate teams.

On your own roster, Edit lineup at the top opens your lineup, and each row and card has the player’s actions menu: Edit player number, Set role…, Place on IR, Waive player, Assign to affiliate, Release player and more.

Depth shows your lineup as it stands: four forward lines, three defense pairs, and your Starter and Backup in goal. Each player sits in his spot with his Overall, his role on a wider screen, and any WV, IR or INJ marker; a spot with no player shows Empty. Below the lineup, Press box lists every player on your roster you haven’t dressed, injured players and players on injured reserve included, and On the affiliate lists the players you have assigned there. Depth only shows the lineup: you change it in Edit lineup, and a change shows in Depth as soon as you save it. Depth is on your own club only. In Depth and in Breakdown the Display menu holds just Download CSV.

Roster rankings

Roster rankings sits on your team’s Home, under your next game and the standings, and shows how your roster compares with every club in your league: a rating and a place for each part of it, and where you are thin. Full breakdown → takes you to the Breakdown layout on Roster, with fit, every attribute, and the ages, depth and contracts behind the ratings. If a category is marked as a weakness, look there first when you trade or sign a player.

Every club’s page has one, so you can read a rival’s roster the same way. The line under the heading names the league and how many clubs you are ranked against.

The four units. Forwards rates your top nine forwards, centers included; Defense your top six defensemen; Goaltending your top goalie; and Depth the players behind them: the next three forwards, the next two defensemen and the second goalie. Players are taken in order of Overall, not from your lineup, and each unit is measured by their Overall. Beside each unit are its rating out of five and its place in the league, such as “11th of 28”. If you have fewer players than a unit holds, each empty spot counts as the lowest-rated player at that position anywhere in the league, and a club without a goalie places last in Goaltending.

How the ratings are set. A rating measures how far your figure is from the middle of your league: close to the middle fills three of the five marks, above it more, below it fewer, and the further away, the more or fewer. It follows the size of that gap, not your place, so in a league where the clubs sit close together most of them rate in the middle even when their places are far apart, and a place in the middle of the table can still rate low when the gap is real. It says where you stand in this league, so the same roster can rate differently in another one. Clubs with the same figure share a place and a rating, and a club with nothing to measure, such as one without a goalie, rates lowest. In a league with only a few clubs, the rankings show places alone, without ratings.

The profile. Five figures read your roster by kind of play. OFF (shooting, passing, puck handling and skating), DEF (defense), PHY (physical play) and SPI (spirit) are averages over your top nine forwards and top six defensemen; GOAL averages your top goalie’s ratings. Each has its rating and place, and its tooltip says what it measures. Breakdown lists every skater attribute, averaged over the same players except faceoffs, which only your top four centers count for, with its place in the league and a bar showing that place; an attribute that would rate four or five out of five shows in green, and one that would rate one or two in orange, like a weakness.

Weaknesses. A profile category rated one or two out of five shows in orange, and the line under the profile names the weakest of them with its place, such as “Thin on spirit.” The weakest is the one with the lowest rating, and among those the lowest place. Only the profile is marked; the four units show their rating alone. Without ratings, as in a league with only a few clubs, nothing is marked.

Fit with your systems. On your own club’s page, Breakdown also shows how well your players suit your offense and defense systems, as a meter and a word: Built for it, Good fit, Uneasy fit or Poor fit. It is the same reading the Fit bar gives those systems when you choose your tactics. It shows once you have chosen both systems, and never on another club’s page. What fit measures is on tactics; How fit works in Breakdown opens that page.

By position, in Breakdown, gives each position group (Centers, Forwards, Defensemen, Goalies) its number of players, Avg age, Avg OVR and Salaries, the group’s salaries added together, and the same for your whole roster on the Roster line.

Age, depth and contracts, also in Breakdown.

• Age profile places every player on your roster by age, one row per position, each marked with his number and ringed in the color of his Overall; his tooltip gives his name, age and Overall. The line above it gives your core’s average age (the top nine forwards and top six defensemen), the league’s, and where your core places counting from the oldest.
• Depth sets the players you have at each position against what a game dresses. No cover means you have exactly what a game dresses, with no spare to step in; a count marked short, such as 1 short, means you have fewer than a game dresses. Why a spare matters is under roster size.
• Contracts splits your salary and your players by when their deals run out: Expiring (in their final season), Next summer (one more season after this one) and Signed long. Biggest decisions: names the largest expiring deals.

Players assigned to your affiliate are left out of everything in the rankings except Contracts, where their deals count like any other. On your own page, your roster counts as it stands now and the other clubs as they stood earlier in the day, so a rival’s latest move may not show yet.

The rankings on Home show the units and the profile at every width; everything else is in Breakdown, on every club’s page. Roster itself opens straight on the list.

Roster size

The roster limits are 20 and 30 players. Twenty is what you dress for a game — four centers, eight forwards, six defensemen and two goalies — so a roster at the minimum has no one to cover an injury.

If you have no spare at a position, add one. When a dressed player can’t play on game day, his stand-in comes from his own position on your roster first. Failing that, the game recalls a player at his position from your affiliate. Failing that, it plays someone out of position, from your roster before your affiliate; a goalie is only ever replaced by a goalie. With no one left at all, it signs a last-minute reserve to your roster on a contract you didn’t choose, and his salary counts against your cap.

What counts. Your roster size is every player under contract with your club, injured players, players on injured reserve and players assigned to your affiliate included, plus every player you have an offer out to and every player who has agreed to join you but hasn’t arrived. Players on waivers don’t count, nor does a prospect whose rights you hold. Every limit below counts this way.

At the edges:

• The maximum. Once your roster size reaches 30, you can’t offer a contract to a player who isn’t on your roster: the offer screen says “Your roster is full (30 players)”. Withdrawing an offer or putting a player on waivers makes room. A full roster doesn’t stop an extension for one of your own players, or a waiver claim.
• The minimum. During the season you can’t release a player while your roster is at the minimum. In the off-season you can release freely. The board can also refuse a release that would leave you too thin at his position. Releases are on player contracts.
• Trades. During the season, Accept trade stays unavailable while a trade would leave either club outside these limits; in the off-season the limits don’t apply to trades. Roster after on the trade screen shows each club’s roster size after the deal, and warns when a position would be left short. A short position doesn’t stop the trade, but it leaves you with no one to cover there; see trades.

While you are over the maximum, releasing a player leaves no dead cap; see player contracts.

Injured reserve

An injured player can go on injured reserve (IR). While he is there, his salary counts nothing against your cap, which gives you room to recall a player from your affiliate or sign a replacement. Choose Place on IR in his actions menu, on his roster row, his card or his page, and confirm Place on IR.

If you need the cap room while he is out, place him on IR the day he is hurt. For a short injury, when you have the cap room, keeping him off IR keeps him available the day he heals, since the minimum stay can keep him out past that day.

Only an injured player can go on IR, however short his injury. Placing him takes him out of your lineup and off any captaincy. His salary counts nothing this season or next; see salary cap. He stays on your roster and still counts toward your roster count. While he is on IR he can’t play, even after he heals, until you activate him.

Activating him. Choose Activate from IR and confirm Activate player. He must be healthy, he must have served the minimum stay, and you need room under your cap for his salary; if something is missing, the dialog says what. The minimum stay counts from the day you place him, injured days included. Activating him brings him back to your roster, not into your lineup: put him back in Edit lineup, and name him captain again if he was one.

When he heals, a notification tells you that he can be activated, or how many more days he must stay. If you want to keep him, activate him then. Once he is healthy and past the minimum stay, he can stay on IR only a little longer: a reminder comes shortly before, and then he goes on waivers by himself, where other clubs can claim him.

While your assistant runs the club in your absence, he places players with a long injury on IR and activates them once they can come back and the cap has room. Computer-run clubs do the same.

Injuries

Players get hurt in games. An injured player can’t be dressed until he heals, and the roster marks him INJ. The marker’s tooltip names the injury, lower body, upper body or a concussion, and how many days he is still out.

He heals a day at a time. You get a notification when he is hurt and when he recovers, and a long injury is announced to the league. At the end of the playoffs every injury heals an extra stretch at once. His page shows the same marker as the roster.

On game day a stand-in takes the injured player’s spot and keeps it after the game; during a game, a hurt player is covered shift by shift. A tired player is more likely to get hurt, and so is one facing a checking line. All of this is on lineup.

Worth knowing

• While you run the club yourself, a player on injured reserve can’t play even after he heals until you activate him, and activating him doesn’t put him back in your lineup or give back a captaincy.
• The minimum stay on injured reserve counts from the day you place him, injured days included, so placing him the day he is hurt lets you activate him sooner once he heals.
• Players on injured reserve and players assigned to your affiliate still count toward your roster count.
• In Roster rankings, players assigned to your affiliate are left out of every rating, the age profile and the depth count, but their deals still count under Contracts.
• If no one at his position on your roster can stand in on game day, the game recalls a player at that position from your affiliate before playing anyone out of position; with no one left at all, it signs a last-minute reserve to your roster, and his salary counts against your cap.