How to go to 84-0 and win Puck Perfection

I almost had it. Or at least, I thought so. Wayne Gretzky at center. Kirill Kaprizov on the left wing. Denis Potvin and a 98-rated Carey Price rounding out the lineup. Projected record: 83-1-0.

One loss. With a team that should have destroyed every opponent on paper.

So I dug deeper and pulled the source code, found the actual simulation logic, and reverse-engineered the entire formula with the help of my friend Claude. Here’s what I found out how you go 84-0.

The game is deterministic

Puck Perfection doesn’t roll dice. It shows you a „Projected Record,“ which means the outcome is fully calculated from your roster. Same lineup, same result, every time.

Which makes the 83-1-0 result interesting: it’s not bad luck. It’s a predictable outcome baked into the formula.

There’s a hardcoded ceiling of 83

The win calculation for the classic 6-player mode contains this line:

return clamp(Math.round(f), 0, SEASON_GAMES - 1)

SEASON_GAMES - 1 = 83. Without a specific condition being met, the code is incapable of returning 84 wins. You can have the highest possible team strength and the result is still capped at 83.

That’s why some of my attempts (including the one shown in the picture) always produced 83-1-0. Not one loss because of a tough opponent. One loss because the code says so, until you clear the threshold.

The three conditions for 84-0

Deep in the simulation function, there’s a single escape hatch:

if (allRated98Plus && spreadMax2 && strength >= 98.5) return 84

Three conditions. All must be true simultaneously.

Condition 1: Every player rated 98 or higher. All 6. No exceptions. One 96 in your lineup and the condition fails – regardless of what the other five are.

Condition 2: Rating spread ≤ 2. The difference between your highest and lowest rated player must be 2 or less. A lineup with a 98-rated goalie and a 100-rated center is fine (spread = 2). Mix a 97 with a 100 and you’re done (spread = 3).

Condition 3: Team strength ≥ 98.5. The game calculates a composite team strength score (0–100) based on weighted position values, plus a chemistry bonus. If any player is rated 99 or 100, the base score is already ≥ 99, so this condition is automatically met. The only tricky case is a roster of exactly six 98s with no chemistry — that lands at exactly 98.0, just below the threshold.

The safest path: all ratings 99 or 100

Ratings 99 and 100 satisfy all three conditions at once: every player clears the 98 threshold, the spread is at most 1, and the strength score lands at 99+. No chemistry calculation needed.

Here’s what’s available per position (without the Original Six era):

• Left Wing (99): Kirill Kaprizov (2020s), Bobby Hull (Expansion), Alex Ovechkin (2000s / 2010s)
• Center (100): Wayne Gretzky (1980s), Connor McDavid (2020s), Mario Lemieux (1980s / 1990s), Sidney Crosby (2010s)
• Center (99): Auston Matthews, Nathan MacKinnon, Eric Lindros, Joe Sakic, Bryan Trottier, Connor McDavid (2010s), and several more
• Right Wing (100): Teemu Selanne (1990s)
• Right Wing (99): Brett Hull (1990s), Jarome Iginla (2000s), Mike Bossy (1980s), Nikita Kucherov (2020s), Pavel Bure (1990s / 2000s)
• Left Defense (99): Ray Bourque (1980s / 1990s), Denis Potvin (1980s), Nicklas Lidstrom (2000s), Roman Josi (2020s)
• Right Defense (100): Bobby Orr (Expansion)
• Right Defense (99): Cale Makar (2020s), Erik Karlsson (2010s)
• Goalie (99): Martin Brodeur (1990s / 2000s), Andrei Vasilevskiy (2020s)

Any combination from this list produces a valid 84-0 roster. You can download a list of all players with a rating of 98+.

What went wrong

My first 83-1-0 had Jason Pominville (96) at RW and Al MacInnis (96) at RD. My second attempt (see below) had Luc Robitaille (96), Marian Gaborik (96), and Borje Salming (96). Both rosters broke Condition 1. The code never even evaluates the other two conditions.

Both times, the formula gave a very high strength score after chemistry – close enough to push projected wins to 84, which then got capped back to 83. That’s the exact output: round(84) → clamp(84, 0, 83) = 83. Hence 83-1-0, twice, with a goal differential of exactly 0.

The one edge case worth knowing

Six players all rated exactly 98 can technically achieve 84-0, but only with enough chemistry. The base strength lands at 98.0 – below the 98.5 threshold. A chemistry bonus of at least 0.5 is needed, which comes from shared franchise and era connections, or from role combinations (playmaker with a sniper, defensive pairings with complementary skill sets). Picking 98-rated players from the same team and decade makes this reliable. Picking six unrelated 98s from different franchises is a coinflip.

The safe move is still 99s and 100s. Which is easier said than done. Because as of June 11th, 3:35 p.m., only 7 out of 139.360 runs (0,005%) have resulted in a 84-0.