Thursday evening, an hour before the game. You know who said yes. Now you need lines, a goalie and a bench, and you'd rather spend those minutes on the ice than on a whiteboard.
That's what Suggest lineup is for. In this release, it got a lot closer to how a manager actually thinks.
What's new
It knows who plays where. Suggest lineup now works from each player's positions on your team. Only someone who plays goal goes in goal, and everyone else is placed in a position they play. When it can't fill a spot, it leaves it empty and tells you why in a sentence, so you can decide.
It's only as good as the positions it's given. As a manager, you can set the positions each player plays on your team, straight from the roster. It takes a minute per player, and it pays off at every game: take a look at your roster before your next one.
It learns from your team. The suggestion looks at your last five saved lineups and at each player's season so far: games, goals and assists, and your goalies' own numbers. The lines you've built before are the best guide to the lines you'll want next.
What you type stays yours. Notes on a game, a player's name, anything people write: it's read as information, never as an instruction. That's how every AI feature in benchli works, not just this one.
You have the last word. A suggestion is a starting point. Move anyone, swap a line, save it, and that saved lineup becomes part of what the next suggestion learns from.
Also in this release
Ask your own assistant. You can now connect benchli to ChatGPT or Claude and ask in your own words: who hasn't answered for Thursday, how many are coming, how your season is going. It only sees what you choose to share, and you can disconnect it at any time. How AI assistants work with benchli.
Invites in their language. When you invite someone to your team, you choose the language their invite goes out in: English, German, French, Italian or Spanish. It no longer simply follows yours.
The full list is on What's new.
Why we build AI this way
AI in benchli is there to save a manager ten minutes on a Thursday evening, not to make decisions for the team. It should know your team as well as you'd expect a good assistant coach to: who plays where, who's been reliable, which lines have worked. And it should always leave the call to you.
What's next
Later this season, lineup suggestions become part of Casey, benchli's assistant coach: the same help with lineups, plus notes after a game and a summary for the coach. As always, the teams using benchli will tell us what to build next.
If something in benchli gets in your way, tell us inside benchli.
Built for teams. Made for players.