NHL DFS Scoring Changes on DraftKings
It’s officially Fall, and while it doesn’t feel that way outside here in St. Louis, this means that it’s finally time for the NHL to return. The puck drops on the regular season on October 2nd, and DraftKings just unveiled their revamped NHL scoring for the 2019-20 season.
Here’s a look at these new changes compared to last season:
While these changes may seem drastic from a visual perspective, digging into them closer shows that they won’t have too much of an effect on DFS strategy. However, there are some things to take note of and I will touch on these below.
Skaters
I’m ignoring the unnecessary 7.5X multiplier for shootout goals. Not sure why it received such a boost, but its impact is marginal. Aside from that, we see that both SOG and Goals scored received the biggest boost with the new scoring. Factor in that bonus for 5+ shots, and high shot-volume snipers (ie: Alex Ovechkin, Nathan MacKinnon, Patrick Kane, etc) become even more desirable.
It’s also worth noting that the blocked-shot bonus could create some fine value options (at least early in the season). For instance, Alex Edler averaged 3.0 blocked shots per game last season which, on its own, would give him a 6.9 fantasy point game without any additional offensive output.
Goaltenders
Looking at the scoring chart above, we can see that Wins and Shutouts were both increased at a 2X multiplier, meanwhile both Saves and Goals Against received 3.5X multipliers. In my opinion, this is likely where we’ll find the biggest DFS game effect of these scoring changes.
Take a look at some hypothetical goalie box-scores below and their respective 2018-19 and 2019-20 DraftKings fantasy point production:
Some takeaways from the above examples;
1) Of course we still want a shutout from our goalie, but ignoring potential shot-volume could be a big mistake if the shutout doesn’t come to fruition. With that said, the shutout became more dominant compared to the field in the examples above. 35+ save shutouts are going to be slate-breakers (worth at least 37.5 DK Points).
2) Take a close look at goalies 5 and 6. These stat lines are eerily similar yet the fantasy output is significantly different. Goalie #5 picked up just four extra saves which unlocked the 35+ save bonus. The result: 42.2% more fantasy points (as opposed to just a 14.3% difference last season).
3) While not significantly different than with last season’s scoring, a look between goalies #2 and #5 quickly highlights the importance of picking a goalie who should see a decent workload. By almost all standards, goalie #2 had a better real-life game than goalie #5…. however, the 35+ save shot bonus was able to more than overcome the poorer save percentage.
Who else is ready for some higher scoring NHL DFS games on opening night?