How Your Player's Rating Works
Every player gets one number, from 0 to 99 — the Overall, or OVR. Just like a hockey video game. Here's exactly what goes into it. No guessing. No black box.
What the OVR really is
The OVR is one thing: how much your player helps the team.
We look at what they do in games — goals, assists, and how the team does when they are on the ice. Then we compare it to other players their age and position. A higher OVR means a bigger impact.
The six skill bars
Under the OVR you will see six bars. These are a skill breakdown — like the player card in a video game. They show how your player makes their impact. Are they a shooter? A passer? A defender? Each bar comes from real game stats, pulled in for you plus anything you add.
Every player has an identity
A sniper is not judged the same way as a stay-at-home defenseman — and they should not be. So every player gets a Player Identity, like Sniper, Playmaker, or Two-Way Defenseman.
The identity shapes the feedback, not the number. Game reports judge a sniper on finishing and a shutdown D on defending — but the OVR itself uses the same fair impact math for everyone, so no identity gets a free boost.
Graded against their own league
We compare your player to others in their own division — not against older or higher-level players.
See your Data Strength grow
One more piece: the rating is honest about what it knows. With only a few games, it stays careful. The more real games and reports you add, the stronger and more accurate it gets. Try it:
The Data Strength score shows how sure we are about the rating. Move the sliders to see it climb as you add more.
Data Strength
34%
Just starting
Upload one game’s stats to jump ahead.
95% is as high as it goes — there's always a little more to learn.
Why does the rating look low right now?
A low rating does not mean your player isn't good.
It means we have not seen many of their games yet.
When you start, the number is low. That is on purpose. We do not guess. We wait until we have seen real games.
The more games you add, the more we learn. The number goes up and gets more accurate.
How the rating grows
How it worked for an example player
Meet Jordan, a U18 forward. (Just an example — not a real player.) Watch the rating climb as we learned more.
Same player the whole time. Nothing about Jordan changed — we just learned more, so the rating got more accurate and climbed.
Think a rating is wrong?
You can ask us to double-check it. On your player's Progress page or any game report, look for the small “Think this rating is wrong?” link near the rating. Tell us what looks off — a missing game, a stat that doesn't match, anything.
A real person reviews every request. You'll get a notification with what we found — and if something is wrong, we fix it.
On iPhone: add the Shift Excellence widget to your home screen to see your player's overall rating and next game at a glance. Open the app once after installing so the widget can load your player.
A low number is just the start. Keep adding games. The number climbs.