NHL Squares — the grid, and the three-period payout nobody expects
The 10×10 grid everybody already knows, for a single NHL game. Players take squares, the digits are drawn at random once the grid is full or at a time you set, and the axes are the last digit of each club’s score.
Hockey pays THREE times, not four: the end of the 1st period, the end of the 2nd, and the final score. There is no third-period payout, because the end of the third period IS the end of regulation — naming one would either duplicate the final or contradict it. Overtime and a shootout roll into the final, so a board pays once at the end on the score that actually stands.
Low scores are the whole character of a hockey grid. Most periods end 0–0, 1–0 or 1–1, so the low digits carry real weight and a square nobody wanted in the draw can be the best one on the board. It is the reason a 1–0 game that would bore a neutral keeps a room of squares holders watching every shift.
NHL Season Squares — sell it once, run it for months
Season Squares is one grid that lives across many games. A supporter buys a square once and keeps it, and the numbers are redrawn for every game, so a square that was useless in October can win in February.
That makes it the fundraiser format with the least ongoing work: one ask, one sale, and six months of reasons for people to care. Price the prizes per game or per period, and set what happens to the money for a game that is never played.
Build the slate from one club’s home schedule — the season-ticket group’s pool — or its whole season, home and away, or by searching the real schedule game by game. The schedule comes from the real NHL calendar, so a postponed game moves on your board too.
NHL Pick’Em — pick the games you actually want
A twelve-game Tuesday is far too much to pick every night, so an NHL Pick’Em is built around the games you choose rather than the whole card. Take a marquee national game each week, every game one club plays, or a handful you pick by hand from the real schedule — then let it run.
Scoring can stay simple (one point a win) or use confidence points, where players rank their picks and a bold call is worth more than a safe one. Add a tiebreaker on a chosen game if you want a clean winner rather than a shared pot.
Every pick is graded against the real schedule as the games end, so the standings move while people are still watching. Picks lock at each game’s own puck drop, so somebody picking a late Western Conference game is not shut out by a 7pm start in the East.
NHL Survivor — one club a week, never the same twice
Survivor asks for one decision a week instead of one a night, which is what makes it survivable across an 82-game season. Everybody picks a single club to win that week. If it wins you survive; if it loses you are out, and you can never use that club again, so the easy picks disappear as the season goes on.
Hockey has no week of its own — there is no "Week 7" on an NHL calendar — so you choose the weeks and the games that sit in each one, pulled from the real schedule. It is a few minutes of setup rather than one press, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Once the weeks are built, everything after that is automatic: picks lock at puck drop, results land from the real feed, and the standings keep themselves.
Choose what happens when somebody forgets to pick — a strike, the week’s biggest favourite assigned automatically, or their previous club carried over — and whether players can put an entry on auto-pilot. Pick reminders go out by email and push to anyone still alive who has not picked. Add strikes, buy-backs, mulligans or a second-chance bracket if you want the pool to last longer.
