About Backcheck

Backcheck is an independent, fan-made hockey game. Draft a six-player all-time lineup and find out whether it could survive a perfect 82-game season. It is a love letter to hockey history, not an official product.

Data & credits

• The universe spans ~4,000 players and 34,000 player-seasons across NHL history — superstars and role players alike. Counting stats come from the official NHL Stats API and are used as facts for identification and comparison.
• Modern advanced metrics (expected goals, Corsi, and goalie GSAx for 2008–present) are sourced from MoneyPuck.com. Data courtesy of MoneyPuck.com. We gratefully acknowledge their work.
• No team logos, no team-color trade dress as branding, and no player photographs are used. Teams are shown by text name and a neutral monogram chip.
• Historical reference cross-checking is done manually; no third-party dataset is scraped or redistributed.

How ratings are built

Each player-season is normalized within its own era and position using z-scores, so players from different decades compete on a level sheet. Goaltending is a first-class category, and a bottleneck penalty makes a single weak pillar genuinely costly. Ranked results are computed on the server from your roster, so the same lineup always earns the same record.

Not affiliated with, endorsed, or sponsored by the National Hockey League, its teams, or the NHLPA.