NHL Daily Plays: Thursday, October 30th
Happy Thursday, fellow NHL DFSers! Once again, thank you very much for the wonderfully kind words and feedback last week. So far, my “Nils” statistic has fared well in predicting whether a game would be of the “high-event” or “low-event” variety. Let’s see how it does today.
Following Wednesday’s uneventful two-game slate, the NHL gives us the usually busy slate on Thursday with 10 games from which we may select players for our lineups. A quick glance at the matchups hints that the Sabres are playing what should be another awful game (again, my apologies to the three (yes!) Sabres’ fans that read this) and there are a handful of games that should be fun to watch, but may not provide the best statistics for fantasy purposes.
As a public service announcement, in doing a survey of the pricing for these “Daily Plays,” as I am sure you all know, each daily site has the players priced rather differently. As such, some of the recommended bargain plays may not be bargain plays on, for example, FantasyAces or DraftDay.
Before we dig into today’s daily plays, let’s examine what the current Vegas lines are telling us. Any astute daily fantasy player must be in tune to Vegas lines and over/unders as “they” always know more than we do. Our job is to interpret what these numbers mean so that we can use them in populating a DFS lineup on your favorite site. In looking at the Vegas lines, the heavy favorites are the Bruins (-244 over the Sabres), the Lightning (-155 over the Flyers), the Penguins (-152 over the Kings), the Blackhawks (-147 over the Senators), and the Wild (-145 over the Sharks). Of the twenty teams in action, no team is playing on back-to-back nights. Akin to NBA DFS, there will be times when we will make lineup decisions based off of which teams are the most rested.
Good luck! I will online for most of the day to answer questions in the comments section below or on Twitter @TheTonyM.
Goalies
Make sure to check the RotoGrinders Starting Goalies Page to confirm that the goalies listed below are starting prior to puck-drop
Niklas Svedberg – Boston Bruins – At 11:48am EST today, Boston Bruins beat reporter, Amalie Benjamin, confirmed that Niklas Svedberg would start tonight for the Bs and not Tuuka Rask. The Vegas line has moved off of the Bruins a little bit since ML was first posted last night. Sitting at about -210 in favor of the Bruins, the O/U still remains at 5.0. Svedberg is my highlighted goalie play of the day on the road in Buffalo, especially given his price tag. At $6,800 on FD (or 12.4% of the cap) and $7,100 on DK (or 14.2%), Svedberg’s price is enticing even though the Sabres average a league worst 21.8 shots per game. Both teams skate a pace below league average, with the Sabres sitting at under a 4.40 goals per game pace, and taken with Vegas’s O/U of 5, this should mean that Svedberg won’t face many shots, but he has as good a chance to earn the win tonight as any other netminder on the slate.
Other goalies I like tonight that are likely to be get the win are Ben Bishop, Ryan Miller, Scott Darling, and Cory Schneider.
Forwards
Disclaimer – Sidney Crosby, Steven Stamkos, Evgeni Malkin, Zach Parise, Chris Kunitz, Patrick Sharp and Patrick Kane carry a high price tag and may also be used as you see fit.
Seth Griffith – Boston Bruins – As noted above in the Rask discussion, the Bruins should continue to dominate tonight against a hapless Buffalo Sabres team that has surrendered the fourth most goals in the league this season. We all know that we cannot put much stock into small sample sizes, but when a team has had such bad numbers this early on and faces a team with an efficient shooters, a smart DFS owner knows to attack the team’s defense. In comes Seth Griffith, who continues to be underpriced on both FD ($4,700) and DK ($3,600). The right winger (but C-eligible on DK), who has five total points (3 G, 2 A, and 9 SOG), skates on the team’s first line with Milan Lucic and David Krejci and with Dougie Hamilton at the point on the team’s first power play unit. Ideally, Griffith would see more ice time as he averages just 14:04 ATOI, but the Bruins’ coach, Claude Julien, has been getting more and more comfortable with the youngster so you can roster Griffith as a player who skates with a team that needs to snap out of a slump and has the recipe to do so against Sabres.
Writer’s Note: Coach Claude Julien has not given the press any updates on the Bruins’ line combinations for tonight and Brad Marchand is a game-time decision. If Marchand goes, he will likely skate on the Bruins’ first power play line with Lucic and Krejci, which would push Griffith to the point along with Dougie Hamilton. This does not affect Griffith’s value. He is a must play for me.
Henrik Sedin – Vancouver Canucks – The Vancouver Canucks open as -125 ML favorites tonight on home ice against the on-again, off-again Montreal Canadiens, who just won a low-event game by a score of 2-1 over the Calgary Flames two nights ago, but were shutout by the Edmonton Oilers three nights ago. While the Canadiens play at a pace below league average (5.30 TG/G), the Canucks play the seventh fastest-paced game in the league (6.44 TG/G). Additionally, if you examine the total shots for per game (Canadiens at 28.7 SF/G, Canucks at 32.8) and the total shots against per game (Canadiens at 31.3 SA/G, Canucks at 29.6 SA/G), these figures, taken with the TG/G statistics, indicate that Montreal will be playing up in pace with respect to the TG/G figure, but will face a comparable number of shots as they do on average. What this indicates in my Nils model is that while the shots against statistic remains constant for the Canadiens, the TG/G statistic will see a spike. Thus, expect the Canadiens to be in for a long night. In comes Sedin, who centers the team’s top even strength line (with his brother, Daniel, and Radim Vrbata) as well as the team’s first power play unit with Daniel and Linden Vey. With four goals and seven assists in nine games this season and a five-game point streak, look for Henrik to add to his offensive statistics in the high-event game and a game that is a get-away match for the Habs, who have two days off as they travel back to Montreal and may have their heads elsewhere.
Alex Killorn – Tampa Bay Lightning – A lower-body injury to Ryan Callahan has boosted the stock of Alex Killorn, who skates with Valtteri Filppula and Steven Stamkos on the Lightning’s first even strength line and with Jonathan Drouin and Filppula on the team’s first power play unit. At just $4,400 on FD and a steal at $3,700 on DK, Killorn should be in line at least a few helpers tonight against the Flyers, who play at the 5th highest pace in the NHL and visit the Lightning who play at just a notch slower than the Lightning. But, this has to do with the quality of Ben Bishop and the awful goaltender from the Flyers, who have given up the 5th most goals in the NHL. His one goal and two assists on the season are not flashy on a fast-paced team, but keep in mind that Killorn has played just six games after being on the injured reserve list with an upper-body injury. Callahan is questionable for tonight’s game and all reports indicate that he will not play. If this is the case, and if you opt not to pay up for Stamkos, make sure you get exposure to the Lightning’s top line for just 8% of your cap on FD (and just 7.4% on DK).
Other forwards that I like tonight are Daniel Sedin, Radim Vrbata, Linden Vey, Valtteri Filppula, Nino Niederreiter and Brad Boyes.
Defensemen
Disclaimer: Erik Karlsson, Duncan Keith, Kris Letang, P.K. Subban and Brent Burns are elite fantasy defensemen and can be used with confidence.
Dougie Hamilton – Boston Bruins – At just $4,600 on FD (but more expensive at $4,900 on DK), Hamilton is priced outside the first fifteen defenseman. As I emphasized in my primer to DFS NHL this year, it is critical to search for players who have stepped up their role due to an injury (or sickness). With Torey Krug out for two-to-three weeks with a broken pinkie finger and Zdeno Chara for four-to-six weeks with a PCL tear in his knee, Hamilton may not take Krug’s or Chara’s roster spot, but he will see a bump in his ice time, including his PP time. Moreover, the top defenseman on the Bruins has always captained the team and been viewed as the team leader. With the Bruins in the middle of a mini-slump, the team will look to Hamilton to pick them up and dominate the Sabres. The defenseman may have just two goals and three assists through the Bruins first 11 games, but he has registered 27 shots on goal and has averaged 22:21 minutes of ice time per game, which should spike upwards starting tonight. The 6’5” defenseman man’s the Bruins’ 13th best PP unit along with Seth Griffith and skates with Dennis Seidenberg as the team’s first even strength defensive pair.
Anton Stralman – Tampa Bay Lightning – Once a bargain bin play, the D-man now skates with Matthew Carle on the Lightning’s first even strength defensive pairing and with Steven Stamkos on the team’s first power play unit. Much like Hamilton’s case, Stralman was thrust into a big role once the team’s top defenseman, Victor Hedman, fractured his finger on October 18. With Hedman out four-to-six weeks from the 18th, Stralman is seeing his average time on the ice per game steadily rising over the past five games, and with the Philadelphia Flyers, who are the most penalized team in the league, coming to town, the offensive-minded defenseman should record plenty of PP time. Stralman comes at a “value discount” compared to other defensemen in his price range such as Brent Seabrook, Cam Fowler, Johnny Boychuck, Eric Gelinas and Erik Johnson. With one goal and seven assists in 10 games, Stralman has registered at least one point in all but two of the Lightning’s games this season. In what should an up-tempo game, Stralman should hit value whether it be a helper or goal on the power play.
Other defensemen I like tonight are Dmitry Kulikov, Kris Letang, Paul Martin, Alexander Edler, Nick Holden and Damon Severson.