NHL Fantasy

How DraftKings scores hockey

A skater gets 8.5 points for a goal, 5 for an assist, 1.5 for every shot on goal and 1.3 for every blocked shot. Then there are four 3-point bonuses: a hat trick, five or more shots, three or more blocks, and three or more points. A goalie gets 6 for a win, 0.7 per save, 4 for a shutout and 2 for an overtime loss, loses 3.5 for every goal against, and picks up 3 more for 35 saves. Two skater bonuses aren't in our number — 2 per short-handed point and 1.5 per shootout goal. They're worth under a tenth of a point a night for all but a handful of penalty killers.

How the projection is built

We don't multiply averages by the scoring table. The bonuses make that wrong: a winger averaging 3.9 shots clears five about a third of the time, so the 5+ shot bonus is worth about a point to him, not zero and not three. So we simulate his night 4,000 times. Shots come off a fitted distribution with real spread. Goals are a share of those shots, because a goal is a shot. Assists and blocks are drawn on their own. Each skater's rates are the same shrunk per-60 numbers behind our NHL player prop boards, adjusted for his projected minutes, the opponent and the score our game model expects. Floor and ceiling are the 15th and 85th percentile of those 4,000 nights — a bad night and a good one, not the worst and the best.

Goalies are one simulated game at a time: the shots he faces, his save rate, the goals his club scores, overtime, and the 5% of starts that end with him pulled. That's why a shutout is always a win here and a five-goal night never is. His points assume he starts. Before the starters are confirmed, a backup can project like a bargain and still play one night in five, so read the start chance before the number.

How good is it? Over the first 60 nights of 2025-26, scored walk-forward, our skater projections missed by 4.49 DraftKings points a player. His season-to-date average missed by 4.52. That's a real edge and a small one. One bounce is 8.5 points, so treat these as a sharper starting point, not a promise. The lineup optimizer builds from exactly these rows.