ESPN Fantasy Hockey Draft Assistant (free, open source)
espn-draft-board is a free, open-source ESPN fantasy hockey draft assistant. It rescores ESPN's projections under your league's own scoring, models how each owner in your league drafts from their past drafts, and names your next pick during a live ESPN draft. It runs in a terminal or as a Claude Code skill, and it is read-only: it never touches your ESPN team.
A read-only draft board for ESPN fantasy hockey. It pulls ESPN's projections and ADP, rescores every player under your league's scoring, ranks them by value over replacement for the roster slots you still need, and during the draft prints one line: the pick and a backup. Nothing here writes to ESPN. You click Draft.
Built and used for real on 2026-09-25 in a 13-team, 20-round, no-bench league. Write-up: How I built an ESPN fantasy hockey draft board
What nobody else does: it models the other owners
Every other ESPN tool ranks players. This one also reads your league's past drafts (scripts/league_history.py) and builds a model of each owner: how often they autopick, when they take their first goalie and first defenceman, and which players they re-draft year after year. Between your picks the board walks every intervening pick with that owner's habits instead of assuming ADP, then prints what it expects to vanish and a positional run alarm:
Layer 2: 4 past drafts, 1040 picks, 18% autopick. Owners modelled: 17 (goalie timing, D timing, repeat picks).
!!! G run: 3 G likely gone before pick 48, best G VOR drops 7
>>> PICK: Jake Oettinger (G, DAL) | backup: Jake Guentzel (F, TB)
Expected before your next pick: Tkachuk (adp), Hughes (favorite), Oettinger (first G), Wedgewood (first G) ...
That output is a replay of pick 31 in a real draft. Five goalies went in the next twelve picks.
How it works
scripts/refresh.py pulls the public ESPN player pool (projections, ADP, ownership, injury status) and, with your login cookies, your league's settings, scoring, rosters and draft picks. Everything lands in a local SQLite file.fhdb/rank.py rescores projections with your league's point values, sets a replacement level per position from your league size and roster slots, and computes value over replacement (VOR) and value over next available (VONA).scripts/draft_board.py --watch 5 redraws the top of the board every 5 seconds and prints >>> PICK: name | backup: name.- During the draft, ESPN's read API usually does not show live picks. So
sync.js reads the draft room's own Picks panel in the browser, you paste the output into taken.txt, and the board drops those players on the next tick. Verified on a full 260-pick mock and a real draft.
scripts/news.py pulls DobberHockey RSS headlines and tags the players named, for injury and line-change checks the night before.
Quickstart
git clone https://github.com/WiredBuilder/espn-fantasy-hockey-draft-assistant.git
cd espn-fantasy-hockey-draft-assistant
python3 -m venv .venv && .venv/bin/pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env # set ESPN_LEAGUE_ID, ESPN_SEASON, MY_TEAM_ID
.venv/bin/python scripts/set_login.py # private league only: pastes espn_s2 and SWID cookies into .env, hidden
.venv/bin/python scripts/refresh.py
.venv/bin/python scripts/draft_board.py --top 25
Draft night:
.venv/bin/python scripts/draft_board.py --watch 5 --top 25 --taken-file taken.txt --skip-file skip.txt
Then, after each pick, run sync.js in the draft room tab, paste its output over taken.txt, and read the >>> PICK line.
Where the cookies live: Chrome, logged in to ESPN, DevTools > Application > Cookies > fantasy.espn.com, values espn_s2 and SWID. They stay in .env, which is git-ignored.
It prints the rules it is using
Every run starts with the league it thinks it is drafting for, so a wrong league id or a stale cookie shows up before the draft, not during it:
League: 13 teams | starters F12 D6 G2 | bench 3 | IR 0
Scoring: W 2, SO 3, OTL 1, G 1, A 1, PPG 1, SHG 2, SHA 1, GWG 1, HAT 3
Ignored (rate stats cannot be summed): GAA
Replacement level (teams x depth F14 D7 G2): F 45, D 25, G 56
Bench seats are spread across F, D and G in proportion to starters and deepen the replacement level. C, LW, RW and UTIL slots all count as forwards. GAA and SV% are per-game rates, so they are skipped and named. If the league has no scoring or no roster slots loaded, the board refuses to run.
Use it with Claude Code
The repo is also a Claude Code plugin with one skill, espn-draft-board. In Claude Code:
/plugin marketplace add WiredBuilder/espn-fantasy-hockey-draft-assistant
/plugin install espn-draft-board@wiredbuilder
No plugin marketplace? Clone it straight into your skills folder instead: git clone https://github.com/WiredBuilder/espn-fantasy-hockey-draft-assistant.git ~/.claude/skills/espn-draft-board (or a project's .claude/skills/). On Claude.ai (Pro, Max, Team, Enterprise with code execution) zip the repo folder and upload it under Settings > Features > Skills; on the API use the /v1/skills endpoints.
Then open Claude Code in your clone of this repo and say "set up my ESPN draft board" or, on draft night, paste the sync.js output and ask "who do I pick?". Claude updates taken.txt, runs the board, and answers with the >>> PICK line and any goalie or defence run alarm. You still enter your ESPN cookies yourself with scripts/set_login.py; the skill never asks for them in chat.
Other commands
scripts/board.py --pos D --top 20 static board by positionscripts/news.py --player "Quinn Hughes" news about one playerscripts/league_history.py pulls your league's past drafts (needed for the owner models above); scripts/history_report.py writes a readable report of who takes goalies early, who autopicks, and what survives to your slotscripts/mock_sim.py simulate a draft against ADP plus autopick behaviour
What it does not do
- It never drafts, queues, or clicks anything on ESPN.
- It has no rookie projections. ESPN projects zero for most first-year players, so they do not appear on the board. Keep your own list. Adding an NHL API rookie feed is the next planned change.
- ESPN's API is unofficial and has no published terms for automated use. This tool makes a handful of read requests per refresh.
How it compares
| espn-draft-board | flaim | PuckAPI skills | espn-fantasy-claude-openclaw |
|---|
| Sport | Hockey | Football, baseball, basketball, hockey | NHL analytics and betting | Baseball |
| Fantasy platform | ESPN | ESPN, Yahoo, Sleeper | None | ESPN |
| Focus | Draft day | League data over MCP | Research and models | Season management |
| Models each owner from past drafts | Yes | No | No | No |
| Runs locally, no hosted service | Yes | No (hosted app) | Uses PuckAPI server for live data | Yes |
| Claude Code skill | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
FAQ
What is the best free draft tool for ESPN fantasy hockey?
If your league uses custom points scoring, a board rescored for those points is more accurate than ranking by ESPN's default projections. espn-draft-board does that rescoring, adds a model of each owner's draft habits, and is free and MIT-licensed.
Does it work with private ESPN leagues?
Yes. Run scripts/set_login.py once to store your espn_s2 and SWID cookies in the git-ignored .env. Public leagues need no login.
Does it draft for me?
No. It never drafts, queues, or clicks anything on ESPN. It tells you the pick; you click Draft.
Does it support categories (H2H categories or roto) leagues?
Not yet. The value model is points-based: projected stats times your league's point values.
Does it support auction drafts or keeper leagues?
It is built for snake drafts and has no bid values. Keeper picks that ESPN records in the draft are treated as taken.
Can I use it with ChatGPT or another AI?
Yes. The board is plain terminal text, so you can paste it into any chat. The Claude Code skill automates the loop of updating picks and re-running the board.
Does it work for ESPN fantasy football, basketball, or baseball?
No. It is hockey-only: positions (F, D, G), stat IDs and news feeds are NHL-specific.
Tests
.venv/bin/pip install -r requirements-dev.txt && .venv/bin/python -m pytest tests
Licence
MIT.
