The Season

The Pro Draft & Turning Pro

Every offseason, all 32 pro franchises draft — entirely AI-run. Your only real decision is what happens after one of your own players gets picked.

In a typical year, with plenty of eligible talent to choose from, the draft runs the full seven rounds and plenty of eligible players still go unpicked, same as a real draft. In a leaner year — a smaller eligible class league-wide — the draft simply runs fewer rounds instead of drafting every last eligible player just to fill out seven rounds. Either way, a healthy share of eligible players never hear their name called, and the draft always stops on a clean round boundary rather than trailing off mid-round.

Draft Order Favors Ceiling Over Production

Teams draft primarily off long-term upside rather than who's producing the most right now — exactly how pro draft boards think, and why a raw, high-potential underclassman can go well ahead of a more productive senior. Goalies carry a scarcity premium, too: since every franchise only ever needs one, an elite goaltending prospect gets pulled meaningfully earlier than a skater of similar caliber would.

Getting Drafted Isn't Leaving

Being drafted only assigns a team's rights to a player — it has zero immediate effect on your roster. He keeps playing college hockey exactly as before, until he signs a professional contract, which is a separate decision resolved individually for every drafted player, not an automatic result of the draft itself.

Most drafted players come back to school. Even a good share of first-round picks return for at least another season — college-drafted talent typically keeps developing on campus rather than turning pro immediately, unlike a major-junior draftee. The exceptions are the genuine blue-chip and generational talents. The odds of turning pro climb the older, more talented, and closer to his ceiling a player already is, and drop the more seasons of eligibility he has left to gain from staying — but the door is never fully shut or fully open: even the surest lock to turn pro keeps some chance of coming back, and even the least likely underclassman always keeps a chance of leaving early.

You get a say for your own players — but only in the year they're drafted. Right when one of your underclassmen is drafted, you get an interactive decision: actively encouraging him to return improves the odds he stays, and you can back that pitch with an NIL retention raise — paid from your NIL Collective, scaled to both the pick and how much of a flight risk he already is — on top of a strong Academic Support investment nudging the odds a little further in your favor. Even a well-funded pitch can't fully override a genuinely unhappy player's odds of leaving. See Finances.

A player who returns to school after that first decision isn't asked again in the same interactive way. From his second season on, whether he finally signs his pro contract is decided silently every offseason, weighed purely against his overall rating and age, with no coaching pitch, NIL raise, or facility investment able to touch it. This means the decision you make (or the pitch you fund) the year he's drafted is genuinely your one real shot at influencing that specific player's path — after that, a returning underclassman's departure is entirely out of your hands, and a strong senior season is no guarantee he sticks around for a fifth year on campus, if a past redshirt left him with one more season of eligibility to use. See Eligibility & Roster Rules for how redshirting works.

Some Players Already Have Pro Rights on Day One

A brand-new dynasty doesn't start with an entirely undrafted league. A realistic slice of the best players already on rosters when you begin — mostly juniors and seniors, occasionally a sophomore — already hold a pro team's draft rights, exactly as if they'd been picked in a draft before your save began and chose to return to school. You'll see the same Pro Draft badges on their player profile (team, round, pick, year) as you would for anyone drafted during your own dynasty.

This is seeded deliberately conservatively. Seniors are the safest group to see this on as a senior graduates at season's end either way, rights or not. Underclassmen are seeded far more sparingly, and only when the odds of an early pro signing next offseason stay reasonably low — the goal is a league that feels like it has real history on day one, not a roster that bleeds its best young players before you've had a season with them. Custom data packs never generate this — every player in an imported pack starts with a clean slate unless the pack itself defines otherwise.

The In-Season Mock Draft

Well before the real draft, a running mock draft projects the first two rounds — the top 64 picks league-wide — throughout the college season, using the same scouting-based ranking the real draft eventually uses. Later rounds aren't projected at all; this early, that far down the board is noise. A hot season lifts a prospect's projected stock, and a cold one drags it down — but never enough to overturn what the underlying scouting report already says about him. A player needs a handful of games logged before his in-season play counts for anything, so an early hot or cold streak can't swing his spot before it means something.

The board doesn't update every week — expect a fresh look every few weeks, starting once there's been enough of the season for performance to matter. Each refresh shows week-over-week movement right on the board: a green arrow for a riser, a red one for a slider, and a "NEW" tag for a prospect who's just entered the projected field, so you can see momentum building at a glance rather than just a static rank.

You'll get a heads-up in your inbox whenever one of your own prospects enters the projected field, jumps from the second round into the first, moves several slots in either direction, or drops off the board entirely — you don't have to keep checking the page yourself to catch a big swing. A new projected No. 1 overall anywhere in the country (not just your own roster) is notable enough to make league news, too. The whole board resets and rebuilds from scratch at the start of each new season, so last year's stock never carries over. It's a good way to track your own prospects' pro momentum without waiting for the offseason — but remember it's a projection, not a promise: the real draft is a separate AI-run event once the season ends, and it's always the first two rounds the mock board is projecting either way.

Graduation Is Separate From All of This

Any player who's simply exhausted his four years of eligibility graduates regardless of his draft status. A graduating senior who was never drafted but is still clearly a quality player (a well-above- average overall rating) can sign on as an undrafted free agent — a real pro path, just without ever having gone through draft night. See Eligibility & Roster Rules.