Drop the Puck - Tabletop Ice Hockey

Three dice. Sixty minutes. No ties.

Drop the Puck is a tabletop ice hockey game with no board, no counters and no deck of cards. Rate two teams with three numbers each, roll three dice, read the goals. A game takes about five minutes. A season takes an evening.

Level after sixty and you roll overtime, one roll for the whole period. Nothing in overtime and it goes to the shootout: three shooters each, then sudden death, with each club's CGF deciding who scores. Trailing by one at the horn, you pull the goaltender and roll the Empty Net, which is sometimes the equaliser and sometimes the puck sliding the length of the ice into an open net.

UPDATE, 28 September 2026. Drop the Puck has had its first update, free to everyone who owns it. New: Period by Period, a way to play Quick Play one period at a time, so the score builds as you go and the third period decides it. New: Sheet 9, the 2026-27 Projection Set, all 32 clubs rated for the season ahead with opening night printed on the sheet, plus a file to load them into the game app. New: a full example game, opening night played Period by Period with every roll. The game app now plays all four modes, and a round of corrections across the books is listed in the Update 1.3 PDF in the download.

What you can play

2025-26, the real one. All thirty-two clubs rated from their full season, and that season printed beside them: the real final table by division, the sixteen clubs that qualified seeded the way the league seeds them, a blank bracket, and a scorecard with the real points filled in and blanks for yours. If a replay is not what you want, ignore the results columns and play the same thirty-two forward as the season ahead.

Any season you like. A club is rated from a league table and nothing else: goals for, goals against, games played, points. Book One gives you the bands, how to shift them for a higher-scoring era so the 1980s do not come out as thirty clubs on maximum attack, and how to read CGF off a points percentage when the old records do not say who won the one-goal games.

The Frontier Hockey League. Twelve fictional clubs in two divisions, rated so anybody can win it, with a 22-round schedule, standings, the Frontier Cup bracket, a page on every town and all twelve printed as team cards with their own crests, ratings, goaltender, captain and a named scorer for every one of the sixteen results on the dice.

And then one of your own. Book Three builds a league from nothing: the clubs, the arenas, the rivalries, a coach and a general manager who are two different men with two different ways of getting sacked, fifteen narrative tables that run from training camp to the summer, and an offseason that ages every club on. Somebody retires. A draft pick turns into a first-line centre. The ratings change, you write them down, and next season is a different league.

Two ways to play

Quick Play is the five-minute game. Long Play is fifteen events over three periods: a d10 control roll decides who owns each shift, the event roll says what it produced, the scoring roll says whether it went in. Penalties hand the other side a power play, and a side that is pressing can give one away itself. A clear chance stopped illegally can bring a penalty shot.

What is inside

Three books (Quick Play, Long Play and Fictional Leagues, 81 A4 pages between them), nine sheets, and three browser tools that run offline in any browser with nothing to install. The first plays both modes with all 44 built-in teams, every rating editable, CSV import, save files, a running commentary, and every table in the game rollable on screen. The second runs a full Frontier League season: fixtures, standings with the tiebreaks in the right order, and the Cup bracket.

The Team Card Creator is in there too: another single-file browser tool that prints any club as a card with its colours, ratings, scoring numbers, goaltender, captain and squad. Both leagues come ready to import, and the Frontier League file carries all twelve crests, so one click gives you the finished deck. The twelve logos are in the download as full-size images as well, yours to use on a wallchart, a tracker or anything else you build.

Sheet 0 is a one-page Start Here that maps every file in the download and says which one to open first.

Both A4 and US Letter are included. Take the one that suits your printer.

What you need: three six-sided dice, a d10 for Long Play, and a pen.

Solo or two players. Print and play.

Independent publication. Not affiliated with, licensed by or endorsed by any league or club.