Roster — Active vs Reserve

What "active" and "reserve" mean

Each row on your roster carries a status flag — active or reserve — stored on the underlying TeamPlayer record. That flag drives almost everything about how a player contributes to your team:

• Active — the player counts against your position limits (typically forwards, defensemen, and goalies — see Salary Cap and Position Limits for how your commissioner configures those numbers), and every game they play feeds the points engine on your behalf.
• Reserve — the player still belongs to you, still counts against your salary cap, and is still locked away from other teams, but they do not earn you points for any games they play while in reserve.

The split exists so you can hold onto injured, suspended, or rotational players without wasting an active slot on a body that isn't producing.

Why it matters for scoring

The points engine looks at the active roster period for each game date — the snapshot of which players were active on your team at that point in time. A player who was active on March 12 earns you March 12's points; a player who was on reserve that day doesn't, even if they played and scored a hat trick. Once a game's been scored, you can't retroactively flip the status to claim those points.

That's why most managers treat the active list as their living lineup decision: who's healthy, who's hot, who's playing tonight. The reserve list is your bench.

Moving players between active and reserve

You move players between the two states from the Roster Management page. A swap is just a roster change — drag, click, or use the move buttons depending on your device. A couple of guard rails apply:

• Position limits: activating a forward when your forward slots are full will be blocked. You either drop or reserve someone else first.
• Monthly change limit: most leagues cap how many roster moves you can make in a month. Each active↔reserve swap counts as one change. See Monthly Roster Changes for the details and where to find your remaining count.
• Salary cap: reserve players still count against the cap, so moving a player to reserve never frees up space. To free cap, you have to drop the player entirely — see Waiver Wire and Drops.

When to use reserve

Reserve is built for the cases where a player is yours but isn't contributing right now:

• Long-term injuries — a 4-to-6-week IR-style absence is the textbook reserve case. Park them, free up the active slot for a healthy skater, recall them when they're back.
• Healthy scratches and demotions — a player who's been sent down or sat for matchup reasons can ride reserve until they're back in the NHL lineup.
• Future-value holds — prospects you're keeping for next season or for a trade can sit on reserve indefinitely (subject to your league's roster size rules).

If a player isn't going to be useful for the rest of the season at all, reserve isn't the right answer — drop them and reclaim the roster slot (and the cap hit). The reserve list is for "not right now," not for "never again."

Related articles

• Monthly Roster Changes — the per-month change limit, what counts, and how the admin bypass works.
• Waiver Wire and Drops — picking up free agents, immediate vs scheduled drops.
• Salary Cap and Position Limits — the per-league rules that shape every roster move.