Fantasy ice hockey for the National League

Matchday Manager Switzerland is an unofficial fantasy ice hockey game for the Swiss National League. You build a 20-player squad inside a budget, set your line-up on every game day, and score points for what your players actually do on the ice. The game is in preparation – the waiting list above is there so that you hear about it the day it starts.

• A budget-capped 20-player squad: 2 goaltenders, 6 defencemen, 12 forwards, at most three from any one club
• A line-up to set on every game day – the deadline is the first puck drop
• Captain, vice-captain and nine players on the bench, with automatic substitutions
• Transfers, Boosts and standings once a week: Wildcard, Triple Captain, Bench Boost, Free Hit
• Private leagues against friends, joined with an invite code

How it works on the ice

It is the same game as our fantasy football, moved onto the ice: you build a squad out of real players from the Swiss National League and you score points for what those players actually do in the games. What changes is the two things hockey insists on — a bigger squad, and a daily rhythm instead of a weekly one.

1. Build your squad. 20 players: 2 goaltenders, 6 defencemen and 12 forwards (4 centres, 4 left wingers, 4 right wingers). A fixed starting budget, a maximum of three from any one club.
2. Set your line-up every game day. Eleven starters — 1 goaltender and 10 skaters, with 3 to 5 defencemen — and nine on the bench, in the order you choose. Your captain scores double; if he does not dress, the vice takes over, and a starter who never gets on the ice is subbed automatically from the bench.
3. The deadline is the day's first puck drop. Not an hour before it: the opening face-off closes that day's line-up. The day's points are settled once the games are over, and the next day you pick again.
4. Transfers stay weekly. One calendar week, Monday to Sunday: one free transfer, up to five banked, and −4 points for every extra transfer. Boosts and the standings run on the same weekly beat.

Picking a line-up nightly but trading once a week is the trade-off we settled on. A line-up frozen for a whole week falls apart when a club plays three times in five days, and having to make transfers every day would turn the game into a job.

Scoring built for hockey

The scoring table is not football's with a new coat of paint. There is no clean sheet to reward: skaters score on goals — a defenceman's goal is worth more than a forward's, because it is rarer — on assists (the primary one counts for more than the secondary), on plus/minus, on shots on goal, blocked shots and hits, and they lose points for penalty minutes. Goaltenders have a column of their own: saves, goals against, shutouts and wins.

Ice time counts too: any appearance scores, and a proper shift count scores more. And in place of football's bonus points, the three stars of the game hand extra points to the three players who are named.

What stays the same

Everything else you will recognise, because it is literally the same game engine that already runs our fantasy football: the private league you set up in a minute and your mates join with an invite code, the captain and the vice, player prices that rise and fall with form, and the four Boosts — Wildcard, Triple Captain, Bench Boost and Free Hit — of which only one can be running at a time.

The account is already yours, too: our fantasy football game is live today and works exactly like this.

Why a waiting list

Because we would rather be straight with you: the game is in preparation, and we are not going to announce a date we might not be able to keep. The form above exists for one reason — to find out how many people are waiting for this game, so we can tell them on the day it starts.

In practice: you leave your email address, you confirm it with one click, and you get exactly one message from us — the one that says we are live. No newsletter, no advertising, and an unsubscribe link in every email. What we keep is set out in our privacy policy.