Fans Daily News BoysHockey Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

Who votes and who runs the Daily News hockey poll

Run by The Daily News, the Fans Daily News BoysHockey Player of the Year lets Massachusetts high school boys hockey supporters pick their top player on a Crowdsignal ballot at poll.fm/17003625. The publisher covers high school sports for MetroWest towns including Framingham, Marlborough, Wellesley, Hudson, Bellingham and Hopkinton, and the 2026 nominee list drew players from communities such as Hopedale, Natick, Medway and Hopkinton. The audience is the local hockey community: teammates, families, classmates and readers who follow the beat all winter.

The format is a single-choice poll. Each nominee appears with a player name and a school or town, and a supporter picks one and submits. Crowdsignal, the platform behind poll.fm, tallies the selections and displays live percentage standings, so the race is visible to everyone watching the ballot.

Facts at a glance

Because all the nominees are minors playing school hockey, this page keeps to the publisher, the sport and the season and names no individuals. The poll is one of several Massachusetts high school sports votes covered on this site, and it sits in a crowded local field of weekly athlete ballots and year-end player awards.

The dated record for this poll

Two editions of this poll are confirmed: 2023 and 2026. That spread is the basis for treating the program as annual here, and the recurrence data points to 2027 as the next expected edition. No full year-by-year archive has been printed, so the confirmed list is the full extent of what is known.

The 2026 window is the one dated fact on the page: voting was accessible for one week, closing at noon on Monday, May 25. That puts the 2026 vote in May, after the hockey season ends, when the publisher's readership is still following the sport's postseason coverage. No opening day, no nomination round dates and no 2027 schedule have been printed by the publisher.

The closed 2026 ballot also preserves the final standings. The leading nominee finished at 33 percent on 201 votes, the runner-up at 15 percent on 93 votes, and the third-place nominee at 13 percent on 78 votes. Those totals suggest a poll decided by a few hundred supporters, which is a normal scale for a single-market high school fan vote and matters for anyone judging how much outreach a serious campaign would take.

Equally concrete are the gaps: no category list beyond the one player-of-the-year question, no ceiling on repeat voting, and no eligibility text; confirm on the live ballot each cycle.

How a supporter votes on the ballot

The ballot itself is quick to use. A supporter opens the poll.fm address, reads the nominee list, clicks the circle beside one player, and submits. Crowdsignal then registers the choice and refreshes the percentage standings shown beneath the ballot. There is no account to create, no email confirmation and no payment step on the published form.

Because the 2026 ballot is marked closed, anyone visiting the address today sees the final results table instead of a live form. The same URL carries the active ballot when the next edition opens, which is why supporters who want to participate should keep the link and check it when the publisher announces the new poll.

The format carries two practical consequences. First, a single-choice poll means every supporter's full weight goes to one nominee, so coordinated sharing within one school community moves the numbers faster than scattered individual votes. Second, the live percentage display means a campaign's effect is visible immediately, and a close race tends to drive a final-day surge as readers check the standings and respond.

Nothing published says anything about repeat voting, cookies or device limits for this poll. Whatever restriction applies is whatever the live ballot enforces when it opens, so the only reliable guidance is to vote the way the form itself allows.

How this poll sits beside its Massachusetts neighbours

Massachusetts high school sports fans have no shortage of public votes, and this poll is one of six sibling programs covered on this site. The Eagle-Tribune Athlete of the Week serves the Merrimack Valley paper's readers, while the Enterprise Brockton Athlete of the Week covers a different publisher's market entirely. Statewide options include the Massachusetts High School Athlete of the Week, the Baseball Player of the Week and the Basketball Player of the Week, plus the Gatorade Softball Player of the Year.

What distinguishes the Daily News hockey poll is that it is a year-end award rather than a weekly series. An athlete-of-the-week ballot resets every seven days through a season; this one crowns a single Player of the Year after the season ends, which concentrates the whole community's attention into one short window. The one-week May format is therefore the defining feature: a nominee's supporters get one week, not a rolling season, to deliver their votes.

That shape changes where outreach effort pays off. A weekly vote rewards a standing routine; this poll rewards a burst of coordinated sharing inside seven days, drawn from the towns the nominee list itself names.

Strengthening support in a one-week hockey poll

A seven-day window changes how support is built. There is no time for a slow burn, so the effective moves are front-loaded: post the ballot link in the team's parent group and the school's hockey socials on day one, ask the athletic department to share it, and remind people midweek before the noon Monday close. Because the standings are public, a visible push in the first days also recruits fence-sitters who like backing a leader.

No printed rule addresses outside help in this poll, which cuts both ways: nothing forbids it in print, and nothing protects it either. A publisher reviewing a high school poll can discount votes it considers invalid, so any purchased support carries that risk and no guarantee. The publisher's own terms, not this page, are the binding text.

For readers weighing options, our award votes page explains how services are priced and delivered, and the honest framing is the disclaimer's: no service, ours included, can promise a result. In a poll decided by a few hundred votes, organized organic outreach from a school community is often the stronger lever.