2018-19 Brings Changes For 25th Anniversary Season

The NFHL Commissioners met in Hershey, PA in mid July to finalize rule changes for the 2018-19 Season. Previously announced by the NFHL the Phase 1 player selection deadline will occur just prior to the opening of the NFHL Season on Monday October 1st with the season opening on Wednesday October 3rd.  Phase 1 selections include the 23 Active Roster players plus 3 additional Reserve Roster players with one from each position of Forward, Defense and Goaltender.  For the first time in league history an additional forward be included in the Phase 1 Reserve Roster selection.

Phase 2 which will include selecting the remaining 12 Reserve Players will now be selected within the first 9 days of the season with those players eligible to be activated on Friday October 12.  In addition there is no restriction on player position on any of the remaining Reserve Roster players added in Phase 2.

In celebration of the leagues 25th year some changes are occurring with the prize pool distribution. Removed is the 3rd Overall prize award with all other awards remaining.  These include the League Overall Champion, 2nd Overall and the four Division Champions.  Funding that was previously used for 3rd Overall will now be added to the NFHL Draft Compensation Pool making this award more lucrative.  In previous seasons the Top 16 teams were eligible for this award that is determined by the NFHL Compensation Lottery.  This season it will be expanded to the Top 25 teams to correlate to the leagues '25th' Season.  As in previous seasons the teams higher in the standings will have a higher percentage of odds available to win the award. 

In addition, the NFHL is adding six monthly awards that will provide "bonus odds" for the NFHL Compensation Pool.  The team that has the most points in a given month will receive an additional 3% chance in the Compensation Pool. "Bonus odds" awards will occur in October, November, December, January, February with March/April combined.  As per the Commissioners: "The new monthly 'bonus odds' award will keep participants more engaged regardless of their position in the standings or time of the season. We reviewed data for the previous two seasons and had this been applied to those seasons each NFHL Champion would only have only received a monthly bonus once with no team winning the award multiple times." 

​For more details on the upcoming changes check out the Official NFHL Rules section.