NHL DFS Slate Summary: Tuesday, December 12th
Welcome to the RotoGrinders NHL DFS Slate Summary. In this article, we’ll concentrate on the key elements of DFS success while delivering analysis on the upcoming slate of NHL games for DraftKings and FanDuel. We’ll discuss today’s NHL DFS player projections, player correlations and NHL stacking, NHL starting lineups, differentiation tactics using NHL projected ownership, and recommendations on ways to create lineup diversity if entering multiple lineups using LineupHQ.
NHL DFS Picks: Slate Summary for Tuesday, December 12th
Today’s Games
Slate Overview
Tonight’s NHL DFS Super Bowl is finally here! Ok, that might be a slight exaggeration, but the $888 contest on DraftKings is beautiful to see in the lobby. The payout structure is even surprisingly nice with just 20% going to first ($100,000). I was worried they might try to have even more allocated to first, but luckily I think they realize that $100,000 and $150,000 are essentially the same as far as attracting players to register. I’ll give some strategy thoughts on how to attack the tournament below. Unfortunately, I’ll have just a single bullet. Normally for these types of tournaments, I’ve been able to snag some tickets in advance of it, and at a nice discount, too. That hasn’t been the case for this, as I’ve completely whiffed on any and all tickets, so I’ll be paying for my one out of pocket and hoping for the best.
The slate brings plenty of intrigue with 10 games in all, which I think is much preferred to the jumbo-sized ones of 13 or 14 games. The Oilers stand out in a big way at -485 and should be extremely popular. Then there’s a big dropoff, and the next tier consists of the Penguins, Golden Knights, and Jets. After that, things level off once again, but there aren’t many teams I’d classify as true teams to scratch off the list (other than maybe Seattle). The biggest injury news will be the status of Kyle Connor and Steven Stamkos as both would open up some value if they were to miss out on tonight’s games.
As always, I’ll plug the RG NHL Discord for any news, but I have something else to pitch. Come join the #Squad-rides channel as we sweat along with a single bet as a community. You can read the rules in the Discord channel, but it’s a blast. Bet $1, bet $100, it doesn’t matter.
Let’s try to win the $100,000 tonight!
DraftKings Abominable Snowman Strategy
Here are some of my thoughts on potential ways to attack this slate from a game theory perspective. I won’t go into specific plays here since the rest of the article will be about that, but these are just overall tips to hopefully give a slight edge on your opponents.
1) In a contest like this, you’ll often see two extremes. One of the extremes belongs to players who might have won a ticket or two to the contest and would otherwise be way out of their usual price range. Even a min-cash for these players would be significant. They’ll generally play more conservatively and load up on chalk in an attempt to make sure they’re in contention to cash. And in high-dollar contests, in general, the chalk is going to be even more condensed.
The other extreme can sometimes go in the other direction, where people assume that to win a contest of this size, you have to completely fade the chalk and go with off-the-board single-digit owned stacks, players, and goalies. In reality, the contest still isn’t that big at 625 entries, so it’s not going to take a perfect lineup to win it. So what’s the lesson here? Sometimes, the midrange options (both for pricing and where they’ll fall for ownership) will be underowned/under projected, giving the potential for some nice leverage. So you don’t have to play the chalk, but you also don’t have to fade anyone who garners even the slightest ownership.
2) Use late swap to your advantage: Tonight’s slate has a unique situation as far as the start times. The first five games all start at 7:00, 7:30, or 8:00 ET. Then there isn’t another game that starts until 10:00 ET when the last five games start. This means we’ll essentially know the outcomes of the first batch of games by the time the late window starts.
If some of the early chalk hits and you don’t have it or your lineups struggle, then it might be time to shift off some of the late chalk. If your early lineup hits or the chalk busts, then you can consider swapping onto some “blocks” or more conservative plays (although this isn’t a necessity if you already love your lineup). Either way, pay attention to the early results and also projected ownership for the late set of games. Use all of this information to guide your decision-making.
Top Skaters
Connor McDavid
DraftKings $9,300
Remember when McDavid and the Oilers were struggling mightily to score goals and win games? Yeah, that seems like a long time ago now. Whether it was luck, the coaching change, attitude changes, or whatever else you can think of, something has clicked for McDavid and company. McDavid had just 4 multi-point games in his first 14 (which by the way, isn’t bad, just bad for him). He’s now had multi-point games in 7 of his last 9 games and has a ridiculous 23 points during that span. As is often the case with him, he’s been far better at home, with 24 points in 12 games versus 12 in 11 games on the road. He’ll face one of the worst teams in the league and should have no problems extending his multi-point streak. Yes, he’ll be extremely popular, but as I said above, you don’t have to fade ALL of the chalk.