Of the four major professional sports, hockey is by far the least popular in the US. It’s a shame, too, because it’s one of the most rewarding games from a fantasy sports perspective. And hockey fans are just as passionate about the daily fantasy version of their sport as they are about the on-ice product.
Here are some questions and answers about playing daily fantasy hockey:
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All of the major daily fantasy sports operators offer hockey contests. Not surprisingly, DraftKings and FanDuel host the biggest games across the widest range of buy-ins.
How does daily fantasy for NHL work?
In an NHL contest, each player is assigned a salary and grouped by position:
- Center
- Winger
- Defense
- Goalie
Users construct a lineup using a combination of positional players. Requirements for lineup composition vary from site to site, but most employ one to two goalies plus two to four skaters from each category. Some sites, like DraftKings, also have a Utility slot which can be occupied by any skater.
Most DFS contests utilize the salary-cap format. Users can concoct any valid combination of players they want, as long as the sum of the salaries falls under the designated cap.
Here are the lineup requirements for some DFS sites:
| Site | Salary Cap | C | W | D | U | G |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DraftKings | $50,000 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| FanDuel | $55,000 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 1 |
Users’ lineups are then pitted against each other in contests across a variety of formats and buy-ins. Edits are usually permitted until the start of each player’s game, but some sites lock all players when the contest begins.
What kind of daily fantasy NHL contests are there?
All contests require paying an entry fee to compete for a set amount of prize money. (Some contests are also free to enter and may or may not feature a prize.) The site takes a percentage of each entry to generate revenue.
Contests fall into a handful of categories:
- Guaranteed prize pools (GPPs): A fixed prize pool is offered by a site with a maximum number of entries, often in the tens of thousands of dollars at the largest sites, with bigger prize pools on busy nights and during the playoffs.
- Cash games: Players can either join an existing contest or create their own. These are smaller than GPPs and not guaranteed to run.
- Head-to-head: A contest that pits two players against one another; the winner receives the entire prize pool.
- 50/50: The top half of the field doubles their investment; the other half of the field receives nothing.
Contests run across a wide range of buy-ins, too. On the major sites, there are tens of thousands of dollars guaranteed every day. The daily lobbies mirror the league’s schedule, though; there are busy days and slow days.
Pick’em-style games have become a major part of daily fantasy hockey. The contests resemble player props and parlays at traditional online sportsbooks, with picks on stats like shots on goal, points, and saves. Sites like Sleeper, Betr Picks, and ParlayPlay offer them in a player-versus-house format, while DraftKings Pick6 uses a peer-to-peer format.
What’s in store for daily fantasy hockey?
The 2026-27 NHL season is underway, which means daily fantasy hockey contests are running almost every night through April. The Carolina Hurricanes enter the season as defending champions after beating the Vegas Golden Knights in six games in June to win the second Stanley Cup in franchise history. That ended the Florida Panthers’ run of back-to-back titles.
Vegas remains one of the league’s best stories, but it’s also a reminder of DFS’s patchwork legal map. Daily fantasy sports are still largely unavailable in Nevada. So while you can bet on Golden Knights games at sportsbooks on the Strip, hometown fans can’t enter most DFS contests.
DraftKings remains an official NHL partner, with sponsorships across a number of teams and arenas. Expect the biggest hockey GPPs around marquee dates like the Winter Classic, the trade deadline, and the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
DraftKings is an NHL sponsor and has partnerships with a number of its teams and arenas.
Additional Sports: Daily Fantasy Football, Daily Fantasy Basketball