Vote for the Daily News Girls Hockey Midseason Player of the Year: How Voting Works & How to Win

What this ballot is and who runs it

Imperial Valley Press, a newspaper, puts this award to a reader vote each winter: a midseason honor for girls high school hockey in Massachusetts. Crowdsignal, the service behind poll.fm, provides the voting page, and the program name points to the Daily News, the publication whose readers decide the winner. The ballot sits at its own poll.fm address rather than inside a larger contest portal.

On the page itself the mechanic is plain: nominees appear by name and school, a visitor selects a favorite, and the choice is submitted. Nothing on the page explains how the nominee list is assembled, so whether the paper gathers the names itself or takes public submissions cannot be read there.

The 2026 nominees come from schools in Framingham, Hopkinton, Natick, Weston, Shrewsbury and Franklin, with the Algonquin/Hudson co-op also on the list. That footprint is a defined slice of Massachusetts rather than a statewide open field, which is why support for a nominee tends to run through one school community instead of a general audience.

The table below collects the fixed details of the program in a single place.

Editions, the January window and what the ballot leaves out

Three years carry confirmed editions: 2022, 2025 and 2026. The cadence is annual, and in every confirmed cycle the voting window fell in January, the point in the school hockey schedule the midseason label describes. The 2026 edition has finished; the poll.fm page now shows a closed banner, and its final tally puts the leading nominee at 46% on 17,507 votes.

Between 2022 and 2025 the page says nothing about whether editions ran; the intervening years are simply unaccounted for. Other details stay off the page too. Imperial Valley Press has not printed the precise start and finish dates of the January window, the full category list, or any ceiling on repeat votes from a single supporter; for all of those details, confirm on the live ballot each cycle. Platform round dates are absent as well.

Because the 2026 ballot has finished, a visitor today sees a completed poll rather than a live vote. The annual pattern points toward a 2027 edition, but no date for it has been posted, and the page describes no nomination round ahead of the January window.

How a supporter votes while the ballot is live

While a ballot is live, taking part takes only a moment. A visitor reaches the poll.fm page, reads through the nominees, each shown with a name and a school, selects a favorite and submits. Crowdsignal registers the choice and confirms it on screen. The page asks for no account and shows no login step, so any visitor who reaches the address can take part.

One thing the page leaves silent is the repeat-vote position. Whether a supporter may come back the following day for another vote, or whether the poll accepts a single ballot per person across the whole window, is written nowhere on it. Anyone planning a routine of repeated visits across the January window should read the fine print on the live ballot first, because the finished 2026 page offers no guidance on the point.

Today the sequence stops early: with the 2026 ballot finished, the submit step is unavailable and the page shows final standings instead. The 2025 and 2026 editions both ran on poll.fm under the same program name, so that address is the natural place to watch when the next January ballot appears.

Where this ballot sits among Massachusetts sports votes

Massachusetts holds a wider cluster of reader-voted sports awards, and this ballot belongs to it. Neighbouring programs include the Eagle-Tribune Athlete of the Week, the Enterprise Brockton Athlete of the Week, the Massachusetts High School Athlete of the Week, the Massachusetts High School Baseball Player of the Week and the Massachusetts High School Basketball Player of the Week, plus the Massachusetts Gatorade Softball Player of the Year. Each runs independently, under a different publisher, on a different ballot.

The Daily News poll differs from those neighbours in shape. It is a single midseason honor for girls hockey, not a weekly series, and it draws its nominees from a defined group of schools rather than the whole state. A follower of Massachusetts high school sports ballots therefore meets this program at a different point in the season than the weekly awards, which refresh every week, and the girls hockey focus reaches an audience the baseball and basketball ballots do not.

For a nominee's family the difference is practical: the push window is short and concentrated in January, leaving the school community less time to organize than a weekly award that returns again and again would allow.

Building support for a nominee in this poll

Support for a nominee here travels through school communities. The nominees come from schools in Framingham, Hopkinton, Natick, Weston, Shrewsbury and Franklin, plus the Algonquin/Hudson co-op, so the practical route is posting the poll.fm address straight to teammates, classmates, parents and local hockey groups while the January window is open. Since the page carries no rule on repeat voting, a share plan should not assume unlimited daily votes; read the live ballot first. The organizer says nothing on the page about outside assistance, so anything beyond ordinary sharing sits in unclear territory; the legal position is summarized on our legality page, and rule-aware tactics are collected in our votes guide.