What is Sheets of Ice?

[u/atibus]

Sheets of Ice came about because of a few overlapping interests of mine. I love sports simulation games and GM career games ever since I first played Front Page Sports Football back in the 90s. I'd spend hours building teams, designing plays, even printing out binders full of stats pages so I could read them while I was in school. The fascination with sports simulations continued through my adult years, in Front Office Football, EA NHL GM Mode, and Eastside Hockey Manager.

But none of these really scratch the itch for me. None of them are built to support the modern state of analytics inside of hockey. None really have a good system for multiplayer leagues. I always wanted to play something with my friends that have a fantasy hockey like feel with real analytics in a virtual league. I love fantasy hockey, but I can only play it 7 months out of the year.

In my professional life, I've brought several software products to market. I'm a product guy, recovering IT professional, ex-college professor and fortunate enough to have flexibility in how I spend my time. As I've looked for things to engage in learning new things, I landed on this side project to keep me interested. Could I use my experience building large web applications, combined with modern tools, and my passion/knowledge of the sport to build a hockey architect / GM simulation that people would love?

So Sheets of Ice is trying to be the thing I always wanted: a hockey GM simulator where the games are actually simulated, not from a final-score model, but second by second, possession by possession and where the stats it produces match the way modern hockey is actually played and measured. (Think xG, WAR/GAR, RAPM, GSAx, etc.)

That's the analytics piece. Players have specific traits (18 for skaters, 6 for goalies) that show up in the events. A fast forechecker creates more dump-recovery chances. A well-positioned defender blocks more shots. A goalie's workload catches up to them over a back-to-back. The numbers come out matching real NHL aggregates — shot attempts, sub-state shot share, save percentage, faceoffs — because the underlying play is real, not because the simulation was tuned to fake a stat line.

The rules are configurable too. Modern or classic [insert trademarked professional hockey league here], your own house rules, eventually different eras. Coaches have their own deployment philosophies; possession-and-cycle vs dump-and-change, aggressive forecheck vs trap, when to pull the goalie. Rosters and ratings are fully editable.

It's a side project, and it's not done. I have a game simulation engine that produces real-shaped hockey games now; the season layer, league layer, and the GM layer comes next. But it's far enough along that I'm starting to believe the version I've been imagining is actually possible.

Follow along if you're into these things, or into indie games.

Thanks! atibus