How Ratings Work
Every card in Rafters is a real NHL season. Here's how we turn more than half a century of box scores into one number from 25 to 98, and how six of those numbers become an 84-game record.
Where the cards come from
Rafters has 22,128 cards across 169 team-eras, from the 1967-68 expansion to the 2025-26 season. Every player who dressed for a team in an era has a card, and that card is his best season with that team in that era. So Wayne Gretzky has one card for the 1980s Oilers and another for the 1990s Kings, and they are different seasons.
The eras are 1967–79, the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and 2020s. The stats come from the NHL's official season records, with traded players split by team. We cross-checked them against Hockey Databank, Hockey-Reference team rosters and MoneyPuck, and they match to the game.
Skaters: points, adjusted for the era
A skater's season is measured by points per game, adjusted for how much scoring there was that year. Goals were far easier to come by in 1985-86 (3.97 per team per game) than in 2003-04 (2.57), so every season is rescaled to a common level of 3.0 goals a game. Gretzky scored 215 points in 80 games; McDavid scored 153 in 82. "League" is goals per team per game that season.
| Season | Pts/GP | League | Adjusted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wayne Gretzky, 1985-86 | 2.69 | 3.97 | 2.03 |
| Connor McDavid, 2022-23 | 1.87 | 3.15 | 1.78 |
A few more rules keep it fair:
- Defensemen also get a small credit for plus-minus, since their value isn't all on the scoresheet.
- Short stints count for less. A season is blended with an average one in proportion to games played, so a hot 12-game stretch can't outrank a full season. Fewer than 20 games (15 in lockout and pandemic seasons) caps a card at 79.
- Short schedules (48 games in 1994-95 and 2012-13, 56 in 2020-21) are scaled up to an 82-game season, so those years aren't penalized.
Goalies: goals saved above average
A goalie is measured by how many goals he kept out compared with an average goalie facing the same shots that season. A .920 save percentage meant more in 1985-86, when the league stopped .874, than it does today. We add a small credit for wins minus losses and scale everything to 82 games.
Because save percentages have bunched together since the 1970s, goalies are then compared only with goalies from their own era. A handful of early seasons without shot data use goals-against average instead. Fewer than 15 games (10 in shortened seasons) caps a card at 79.
From a score to a rating
Each card's score is ranked against every full-season card at its position: centres against centres, goalies against goalies. That rank is placed on the same 25–97 scale used by our NFL game, Run the Table, so a 90 means the same rarity in both.
Because every player who ever dressed has a card, most cards are depth players. That's what makes finding a star in a draw matter.
| Tier | Rating | Cards | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legend | 95–98 | 140 | 0.6% |
| Star | 90–94 | 224 | 1.0% |
| Elite | 80–89 | 476 | 2.2% |
| Pro | 70–79 | 487 | 2.2% |
| Depth | 25–69 | 20,801 | 94.0% |
The 98s
The data tops out at 97. The only hand-set ratings in the game are 20 chase cards rated 98, four per position, picked from the very top of the data:
- C: Wayne Gretzky 1985-86, Mario Lemieux 1988-89, Connor McDavid 2022-23, Phil Esposito 1970-71
- LW: Alex Ovechkin 2007-08, Luc Robitaille 1992-93, Michel Goulet 1983-84, Artemi Panarin 2023-24
- RW: Jaromir Jagr 1995-96, Mike Bossy 1981-82, Nikita Kucherov 2023-24, Guy Lafleur 1976-77
- D: Bobby Orr 1970-71, Paul Coffey 1985-86, Brian Leetch 1991-92, Erik Karlsson 2022-23
- G: Dominik Hasek 1998-99, Bernie Parent 1973-74, Carey Price 2014-15, Igor Shesterkin 2021-22
From six picks to a record
Your team rating is the average of your six cards. Your Draft IQ measures how close each pick was to the best card you could have taken for that slot: the best card scores 100, and every rating point below it costs 10. The season uses both, weighted equally, so drafting well from a weak spin still pays off.
That blend sets your chance of winning each game. Then 84 games are played, with a little luck: at most three wins either way. Here's what to expect:
| Team rating | Draft IQ 100 | Draft IQ 70 |
|---|---|---|
| 80 | 67 wins | 54 wins |
| 85 | 75 wins | 60 wins |
| 90 | 80 wins | 66 wins |
| 95 | 82 wins | 75 wins |
84-0 is meant to be rare. A perfect draft of a 92-rated team goes 84-0 about 1 time in 11, and even an all-98 roster with a perfect Draft IQ does it only about 1 time in 5. Below roughly 92, a perfect season isn't possible. That's why a banner in the rafters means something.
Your season is played on our server, not on your device, so results on the leaderboards can't be edited.
Olympic and Bruiser cards
Olympic cards rate a player's tournament: points per game against everyone in that tournament (save percentage for goalies), plus how dominant his team was. For players who also played in the NHL, their NHL prime counts for most of the rating, because six Olympic games is a small sample. Ratings are also balanced by nation, so you can win gold with any country.
Bruiser cards rate penalty minutes per game within each era, using the player's most penalized season with that team-era. Your score is your six players' penalty minutes over an 84-game pace. The record to beat is 1,496, set by the top six of the 1991-92 Buffalo Sabres, the NHL record team for penalty minutes.
What ratings can't see
Points and saves exist for every season since 1967, so they're the only fair way to compare eras. They do miss defensive forwards, shutdown defensemen, faceoffs, hits and ice time, which weren't recorded for most of hockey history. If a rating looks wrong to you, tell us at info@rafters84-0.com. We read every one.