NHL Best Ball Draft Strategy: How To Win On Underdog

Fantasy hockey best ball is finally a real option: Underdog Fantasy has been running NHL best ball tournaments in recent offseasons, where the team you draft in the summer is the team you ride all season. No waivers, no trades, no lineup decisions. That one twist changes what a winning draft looks like, and the drafters who treat it like a regular points league are giving away an edge before the season even starts.

The Quick Answer

The highest advance-rate NHL best ball roster in the tournament data reviewed on the Stokastic stream is three centers, seven wingers, three defensemen, and three goalies, built by waiting on centers after the elite tier, chasing shots and blocks (with hits as a half-point kicker) instead of pure points, and taking exactly one goalie early. The scoring math behind that build, including why a 50-point defenseman can beat an 85-point one, is broken down below.

Watch: Live NHL Best Ball Draft

Stokastic's Josh Harris and Michael Clifford drafted a real NHL best ball team live on stream and talked through every one of these decisions as the board developed. Watch on YouTube or play the embedded video while you read along.

How NHL Best Ball Works On Underdog

Best ball is a draft-only format. The roster you leave the draft room with is final, and each week the platform automatically counts your best performers at each position toward your season score. The weekly counting lineup in the contests from the live draft was one center, two wingers, one defenseman, one goalie, and a utility slot.

In the Underdog NHL best ball contests the hosts drafted, the scoring is multi-category, and that detail drives everything else in this guide. Here is the skater and goalie scoring from the live draft:

The row that should jump out is blocked shots. A block pays exactly what a shot on goal pays, which means a defenseman who logs heavy minutes in his own end is quietly banking points on nights he never shows up on the score sheet. Contest scoring can change between drafts, so always confirm the numbers in the specific tournament you enter, but the shape of it is the point: volume stats pay, and most of your opponents are drafting like they don't.

Build 3-7-3-3: The Roster Shape That Advances

On the stream, the hosts walked through analysis of which roster constructions actually advanced in NHL best ball tournaments, including work from Matt Moody and DJ Mitchell of the Morning Skate podcast. The numbers are back-tested in the plainest sense, drawn from which roster shapes actually advanced in past tournaments, and the findings were consistent:

• Advancing teams took only one center in the first eight rounds.
• They started wing-heavy instead of chasing the center position.
• They did not reach for defensemen early.
• They took one goalie early, then waited on the position.
• The construction with the highest advance rate was three centers, seven wingers, three defensemen, and three goalies.

Any build can win a single draft. Fantasy sports are variance machines, and sometimes a roster that breaks every rule just hits. The question is which strategy is most likely to work across many drafts, and the 3-7-3-3 shape is the one the advance-rate data supports. Seven wingers is more than most drafters take, and that surplus is the engine: with only your best scores counting each week, extra wingers give the format more chances to hand you a ceiling game.

The shape tells you how many players to take at each position. The next question is when, and center is where the timing decision is sharpest.

Wait On Centers After The Elite Tier

There is a real gap between the elite fantasy centers and the next tier down. That gap tempts drafters into two mistakes: spending multiple early picks on centers, or assuming the first overall pick hands you a super-team.

One cautionary tale from the stream: a season where drafters who took the consensus first overall center still busted at a surprising rate. The reason was the snake. Draft first and your next two picks arrive at the turn, the back of round two and the front of round three, a range that is regularly littered with landmines: aging stars changing teams, goalies coming off down years, wingers whose situations quietly got worse. Drafting in the middle of the first round and hitting on two solid picks in the late teens can build a stronger core than the first pick plus two busts.

Two practical rules fall out of this:

1. Take one elite center if the draft gives you one, then stop. The advance-rate data says one center in the first eight rounds. Fill the other two center slots later, because the format only counts one center most weeks anyway.
2. Late center swings should chase ceiling, not floor. In the live draft, one host took a high-upside young center with one of his backup center slots and explained the logic plainly: if his first-round star missed two months, the season was probably dead regardless, so the insurance pick should be the one with star potential rather than a safe veteran.

Waiting on centers frees up the early rounds for wingers, and it is the wingers and defensemen where the scoring system starts doing real work for you.

Draft For Peripherals, Not Just Points

Remember the blocked-shot row in the scoring table. In a multi-category format, shots and blocks compound all season, hits chip in half a point at a time, and ice time is what generates all three. A defenseman playing 25 minutes a night piles up peripherals even on quiet offensive nights. Three shots and three blocks is six points, the same payout as scoring a goal.

Worked Example: A 50-Point Defenseman Beats An 85-Point One

The live draft produced a clean illustration built on two defensemen archetypes: a point producer who rarely shoots or blocks, and a two-way defenseman with a modest point total but full-season shot and block volume. The read from the draft room was that the 50-point defenseman with real peripherals, provided he plays a full season, would likely outscore the 85-point defenseman without them in this format. Points-league instincts say that comparison isn't close. Best ball scoring says it isn't close in the other direction.

The same logic applies to wingers. High-volume shooters give you a nightly floor of one-point ticks that a playmaker who passes first cannot match, and when the shooting percentage runs hot, those are the ceiling weeks the format automatically counts. When you are picking between two wingers with similar point projections, take the one who fires more pucks at the net.

Take One Goalie Early, Then Be Patient

Goalie wins pay six points, the same as a goal, and the hosts' read is that wins gain relative value as league-wide shot volume trends down. That makes a workhorse starter on a strong team the most reliable goalie asset in the format, and it is why advancing teams took one goalie early rather than zero.

After that first goalie, patience pays. The value play to hunt is the projected starter on a good team who slides because the market is unsure about him: getting a clear number one on a top team as the eighth, ninth, or tenth goalie off the board is a steal. The back of the goalie board, meanwhile, collapses into unsettled timeshares and unproven backups fast. That cliff is exactly why the data says to roster three: your second and third goalies are there to catch the weeks your starter sits or struggles, and the format grades your best goalie line each week automatically.

One early anchor, one mid-round value, one late dart. That is the goalie portfolio.

Stack A Power Play Across Rounds

Correlation wins in every fantasy format, and in NHL best ball it means drafting teammates who share a power play. When that unit scores, the goal, the assists, and the half-point power-play bonuses all land on your roster in the same week.

The advance-rate data puts a limit on it: advancing teams correlated two or three linemates, and past three the benefit got muddy. This is not a DFS tournament where you force a five-man stack. Two or three skaters from one strong unit is the target.

The hosts mapped one on stream without reaching: ladder a single rising team across the middle rounds, taking the defenseman in the second or third round, the top-line forward in the fourth or fifth, and the second scoring winger in the sixth or seventh. Each pick stands on its own, and together they form a correlated block from one offense worth believing in. One trap the stream called out: you often cannot stack an elite first-overall star directly, because his top power-play partners go in the first round too. If you want correlation with an elite player, find his power-play unit's cheaper pieces later in the draft instead.

A 3-7-3-3 roster with one two-or-three-man power-play block inside it checks every box the advance-rate data cares about.

Use Best Ball Drafts To Sharpen Your Whole Season

Two smaller lessons from the stream are worth stealing. First, always keep a couple of players in your queue. A mis-click on stream turned into an instant auto-pick and only worked out because it landed on the player the host wanted anyway; the lesson he drew on the spot was to keep a couple of names queued so a stray click cannot wreck a round. Second, treat summer best ball drafts as season prep, because the board shows you where the market is overcorrecting. In the live draft, a forward who had gone in the late second or early third round a year earlier slid all the way to pick 57 after one down season, and the draft room graded him a prime bounce-back gamble at half his former price. Reading those gaps before camp opens is the same skill that finds value in daily fantasy hockey once the puck drops.

That is the bridge to the tools side. A best ball roster is drafted blind in the summer, but the same market-versus-data thinking powers NHL DFS all winter, and that is where our NHL DFS projections, ownership and stacks in the DataHub do the work for you every slate. If you are new to the daily side, start with our NHL DFS beginner guide and graduate to the full NHL DFS strategy guide.

Ready to turn the draft-season edge into an every-night edge? Stokastic's NHL package puts our projections, our ownership data, and simulation-driven lineup building behind your process, and you can try the Sims free first. Code NHLBESTBALL10 takes 10% off your first payment.

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FAQ

What is NHL best ball?

NHL best ball is a draft-only fantasy hockey format, offered on platforms like Underdog Fantasy, where you draft a roster before the season and never manage it again. There are no waivers, trades, or weekly lineups; the platform automatically counts your best performers at each position every week.

What is the best roster construction for NHL best ball?

The build with the highest advance rate in the tournament data discussed on the Stokastic stream is three centers, seven wingers, three defensemen, and three goalies, with only one center inside the first eight rounds and just one goalie taken early.

What is the best way to draft defensemen in NHL best ball?

Target high-minute defensemen who shoot and block rather than pure point producers. Shots and blocked shots each pay a full point in the scoring the hosts drafted under, so a 50-point defenseman with heavy peripheral volume can outscore a higher-scoring defenseman who contributes nothing outside the score sheet.

What is the best way to draft goalies in NHL best ball?

Take one clear starter on a strong team early, since wins pay six points, then wait. Look for a projected number one on a good team sliding into the eighth-to-tenth goalie range, and finish with a third goalie late, because the position thins out into timeshares quickly.

The Bottom Line

NHL best ball rewards structure over star-chasing. The drafters who advance are not the ones who land the flashiest first round; they are the ones who leave the room with the 3-7-3-3 shape, a surplus of shot-volume wingers, defensemen who pile up blocks and minutes, a goalie portfolio anchored by a winner, and a power-play block wired for correlated weeks. Every one of those edges comes from reading the scoring system more carefully than the field, which is the same skill that wins in NFL best ball and in nightly DFS alike. Draft the format, not the highlight reel, and let the season count your best weeks for you.

Our NHL projections, ownership data, and Sims bring that same data-first process to every slate once the season starts, and code NHLBESTBALL10 takes 10% off your first payment.

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