Support

Email rishthewizard@gmail.com. We aim to reply within a few days. Including your device model and app version (Settings → About) helps a lot.

How to play

• Spin. You are dealt one real team in one real decade. Draws lean towards more recent decades, so you will see the 2000s to 2020s more often than the 1950s.
• Choose a position. You decide where that team plays in your lineup. Only the positions it genuinely had players at are offered.
• Pick a player. Choose one player from that team and era. Their figures are from that era, not their career best.
• Build. Fill all six positions: a centre, a left and right wing, a left and right defence and a goaltender. One team fills one position, so a finished lineup spans six different teams.
• Simulate. An 84-game season is played 1,000 times, and the most common record is yours.
• 84–0? Winning every game is rare. That is the point.

Frequently asked

Why can't I spin again by backing out?

Draws are sticky. Leaving the draft and coming back gives you the same team. Without this, you could reroll until you got a great one, and the whole challenge would disappear.

What if the team I'm dealt has nobody at the position I need?

Then that position is not offered, and it stays open for a later draw. The game only ever shows you positions the drawn team genuinely had players at, so you will never open an empty list. If a draw is useless to you, that is what respins are for.

What are respins?

A respin throws away the team you were dealt and deals another one. Respins come from a short video ad: one video adds three respins, once a run. No amount of extra watching gets you a fourth. Watching it also skips the full-screen ad after that run and the next two. Once they are spent, you play the hand you are dealt. The counter in the top-right shows how many remain, and it survives closing the app.

If you close the ad before it finishes, or no ad was available, nothing is charged: the respin is not spent and your team does not change.

Where do the statistics on the cards come from?

Every card shows the player's real season line from the era he was dealt from: games, goals, assists, points and the rest for skaters, wins, goals-against average and save percentage for goaltenders. Statistics go back to 1950. A few categories were not recorded in the earliest decades, so an older card can have fewer columns, and the card shows only what was recorded. Career honours are real too: Stanley Cups, and the Hart, Norris, Vezina, Calder and Conn Smythe trophies.

What is the number on the player cards?

In Stats Visible, every card shows the player's overall rating out of 99, the OVR. It measures how dominant the player was against their own contemporaries, so a 1950s season and a 2020s season are judged on equal terms. Stats Hidden never shows it.

What is the difference between Stats Visible and Stats Hidden?

Stats Visible shows real figures, career honours and the overall rating on each card, ordered best-first as a starting point, with the numbers there to argue with. Stats Hidden shows only name, position, team and era, and the list is alphabetical so its order gives nothing away. How well do you know your hockey history? The mode is fixed once a run starts.

What is the Salary Cap?

An optional rule for Stats Visible runs, switched on from the New Run screen. Every player has a cap hit set by overall rating: a 99 costs $40M, and every five points lower halves the price. All six picks have to fit under $90M, so the top card is not always the best pick, and players you cannot afford are greyed out. Each open position keeps $1M back, so a capped lineup can always be finished.

Nobody can fit a team of 99s under the cap, so a capped run is read against a record table 4.9 points lower: 84–0 takes 91.8 instead of 96.7.

I picked great players and still lost. Is it broken?

No. Your record comes from your team rating, the average of your six players' overall ratings, read against the table in How to Play: 84–0 takes 96.7. Each run plays the season 1,000 times and keeps the most common record, so you get the record your lineup was built for, not an unlucky week. One or two weaker picks can leave the average just short of a line.

Sandbox

What is it?

The game with the rules switched off. There is no spin and no respin budget: you pick whoever you want from any team in any decade. Two formats. Head to Head, where two people on one phone each build a lineup and the two teams play a single game at a neutral venue. The second player does not see the first player's picks. And Build a Team, where you assemble whoever you like and play a full 84-game season with them.

Does anything in the sandbox count?

No. Sandbox games pay no coins, unlock no themes and never appear in your history or your best run.

My team was rated higher and still lost the head-to-head game.

It is one game. The result screen shows the pre-game win probability for exactly that reason: a 70% favourite still loses three times in ten. Neither side gets an edge for being listed first. Hit Rematch, or play a season if you want the better lineup to show.

Can I change a pick?

Any of them, any time, right up until the game is played. Tap a position that is already filled and pick somebody else. Changing a lineup clears any result it already produced.

Coins and themes

How do I earn coins?

By finishing runs. Every completed run pays 10 coins, plus about one for every five wins and 50 more for a perfect season. An optional short video on the results screen is worth 10 more, once a run, and opening the game on a new day adds 10. Coins from runs are counted from your history, so clearing the history takes those away. Themes you had already bought stay yours.

What are they for?

Themes. Five of the eleven are bought with coins. Nothing in Hockey 84-0 costs real money, and there is no way to buy coins.

How do I unlock the other themes?

By playing well. There is one for a 50-win season, one for 60, one for 70, one for 76, and one that only exists if you go 84–0. They unlock off your best run ever, so a bad season afterwards never takes one away.

Ads

Where do they appear?

• A banner on the results screen.
• A full-screen ad when you leave the results screen, after every second season. Watching a respin video skips it for that run and the next two.
• A video ad when you choose to buy respins. This one only ever plays because you asked for it.

Ads never interrupt a spin, a pick, or the moment your season is revealed. You always see your record first.

Can I pay to remove them?

Not at the moment. There is no in-app purchase or subscription in Hockey 84-0.

Can I stop personalised ads?

Yes, and you can still play the whole game.

• iOS: Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking, and turn off the toggle for Hockey 84-0.
• Android: Settings → Google → Ads, where you can opt out of ad personalisation or delete your Advertising ID.
• EU, UK and Switzerland: the app asks for consent before ads load. You can decline, and change your answer later at Settings → Ad privacy choices inside the app.

Turning personalisation off does not remove ads or reduce how many you see. It changes how they are chosen.

An ad is frozen, or won't close.

Force-quit the app and reopen it. Your run is saved continuously and will resume where you left off, so you will not lose progress. If a particular ad does this repeatedly, send us a screenshot. The advertiser is usually identifiable from it and we can have it blocked.

Troubleshooting

My history disappeared.

History is stored only on your device. Deleting and reinstalling the app clears it, and because there is no account there is no cloud copy to restore. Moving to a new device also starts you fresh.

The app is stuck mid-run.

Force-quit and reopen. Your run is saved continuously, including your draws and your remaining respins, and it will resume where you left off.

Do I need an internet connection?

Only to load ads. The game itself, spinning, picking, simulating and your history, works entirely offline.

Text is too small / I use a screen reader.

The app honours your system text size and is built for screen readers. Wins and losses are never signalled by colour alone. If you hit something that does not work with assistive technology, please tell us. We treat that as a bug.

About the data

Player, roster and statistical data comes from the NHL Stats API, the public endpoints behind nhl.com, transcribed when the app is built. All historical data is real; nothing is fabricated.

Hockey 84-0 is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Hockey League or any of its teams. No team logos or official branding are used.

Still stuck?

Email rishthewizard@gmail.com with your device, OS version, app version and what happened. Screenshots help.