We recommend that all coaches take advantage of our Pre-Draft Player Ranking feature. If you're signed up for a live draft, it's still a good idea to use this feature as these rankings are used to pick players if you cannot make it to part or all of your draft.

When you do rank, it's important to remember that you do not want to rank players position by position. If you were to do this (e.g., all goaltenders, then all defensemen, etc.), the autopick system attempts to draft your ranked goaltenders before considering any of the defensemen (even if an outstanding defenseman is available).

The goal is to set up one master list where you rank players relative to one another regardless of position. With this master list, you select your top-rated player as long as he's available and you have an open roster spot.

Until you change the rankings, they default to our predetermined order. If you're happy with that order, you don't need to re-rank players.

Also, please remember that you do not need to rank all of the players. Any players left unranked are added to the end of your list according to the default rankings. So, if you rank only 25 players — and most managers rank at least this many — player 26 automatically defaults to the best player remaining based on our default rankings, player 27 is the second best, etc.

Additionally, you may prevent any player from ever being drafted to your team by placing him on your Exclude List. Just remember to be careful as no player on this list will ever be drafted to your roster.