Welcome, RotoBallers. It is Stanley Cup Finals' time which means it's time to sharpen our showdown lineup skills and partake in NHL DFS! As always, I'll give you the stats and info you need to build the best lineups possible for your GPP and cash game NHL contests on both DraftKings and FanDuel.
Today I'll be bringing you my NHL lineup picks, analysis, and advice for NHL DFS contests on DraftKings and FanDuel for Monday, June 28th, 2020 at 8:00 PM. Be sure to also check out our awesome NHL tools including our Lineup Optimizer, Research Station, Projections, and DFS Cheat Sheets!
Feel free to follow me on Twitter @jorgepucks as I am happy to engage with readers and try to answer your questions. Good luck RotoBallers!
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Intro and Overview
If you are new to playing NHL DFS, there are several things to know that will help you get caught up to speed. The first thing to know is that stacking lines is important and correlating your plays can pay off. In hockey, if someone scores a goal, there's a good chance that some on his team will receive an assist on that goal, so you want to build lineups around players skating together.
In the image above, you'll see that Sidney Crosby is skating in-between Jake Guentzel and Bryan Rust and this line has skated together for most of the year. The idea behind staking forward lines is that if Crosby gets a goal, there is a higher percentage and chance that either Rust or Guentzel would get credited with an assist, therefore, resulting in more fantasy points.
The second thing is to make sure you look at the two sites and see the different ways to obtain points. On DraftKings, you get bonus points for 5+ shots or 3+ blocked shots so someone like Alex Ovechkin who is a volume shooter tends to be a better play on that site just because he can rack up additional points based on his style of play.
NHL DFS Analysis and Picks for 6/28
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- Montreal Canadiens vs. Tampa Bay Lightning (-210) - 5O
NHL DFS Goalie Analysis Matrix
The matrix above takes the averages of four categories and creates a rating scale to help you decide which goalies to use, which goalies to target against, and conversely which teams could be viable from a stacking standpoint. It looks at four categories: Goals Allowed (GA), Shots Allowed (SA), Goals For (GF), Shots For (SF). The higher the overall rating in the total column indicates that it is a more dangerous matchup for that team's goalie while it might be beneficial to stack against him. If the total is low, that means he is in a good matchup from a fantasy perspective and should be considered for your goalie selection. I match and sync this every day to the actual opponents that they are facing every slate so this is always slate specific.
NHL DFS Power Play Matrix
The Power Play matrix is to help locate matchups that can be exploited should there be an odd-man advantage during the game. Just like the goalie matrix above, the teams are matched up based on their own power play percentage rank and their opponent's penalty kill percentage rank. When looking at this matrix, you will want to look for teams that succeed in the power play rank (lower the rank the better they are) while their opponent has a poor penalty kill rank (the higher the rank, the worse their penalty kill is).
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NHL DFS Core Plays- Showdown Edition
Captain Picks
- Brayden Point ($10,000 DK/ 15,000 FD) - The goal streak finally came to an end for Brayden Point as he was held to just one shot in the final game against the Islanders but with a new series starting, we can anticipate that Point would like to get back on track and start things right back up against Montreal. He has six points over his last five games and has taken 11 shots during that five-game stretch so Point would be one of the better overall captain options on this slate.
- Victor Hedman ($8,800 DK/ 11,500 FD) - If there was one thing we could take away from the Vegas series, it was that Montreal did a great job pressuring the forwards but the blue-liners for Vegas were able to get good looks and did a good bulk of the scoring. With Tampa, they have one of the best blue-liners in the league in Victor Hedman. Hedman has a good floor as he is averaging over four peripheral stats per game and has taken 12 shots on goal over his last five games so if he gets open looks like Alex Pietrangelo was able to get, he might be able to find the back of the net and rack up some fantasy points.
- Carey Price ($9,800 DK) - Price looked great against Vegas and is one of the primary reasons that the Canadiens have a shot against the defending Stanley Cup Champions. Over his last five games against Vegas, Price allowed just nine total goals to be scored and saw over 35 shot attempts in two of those games. If looking to get different in tournament build on DK, rostering Price would be one way to go.
Value Picks
- Josh Anderson ($4,600 DK/ $8,000 FD) - The pricing on Anderson is too good to pass up on DK. Anderson is a critical piece on the Canadien's third line and provides a scoring spark to a gritty line. Anderson is averaging two shots on goal over his last five games and has scored two goals during that same stretch. He sees close to 15 minutes per game and his line could see some valuable minutes against the top line for Tampa which could lead to more scoring chances overall.
- Ben Chiarot ($5,400 DK/ $6,500 FD) - It doesn't get much better than Chiarot from a value cash game defenseman standpoint. He sees massive amounts of ice time and averages over three peripheral stats per game so you know that he will record several fantasy points via shots and blocked shots.
- Alex Killorn ($6,800 DK/ $9,500 FD) - Killorn has been pretty active on the offensive end lately for the Lightning as he has taken seven shots on goal over his last three games and has recorded four total points during that stretch. When looking at the series against the Islanders, all of his points came on home ice which means that they did a good job getting the second line of Tampa and the top power-play line in good scoring opportunities/matchups.
Stacks (In order of preference)
- TBL 1- Palat/ Point/ Kucherov
- MTL 2- Toffoli/ Suzuki/ Caufield
- TBL 2- Killorn/ Cirelli/ Stamkos
Player Pool (In order of preference)
C- Point, Suzuki, Danault, Cirelli, Kotkaniemi, Staal,
W- Kucherov, Stamkos, Toffoli, Caufield, Palat, Gallagher, Anderson, Killorn, Lehkonen, Coleman, Byron, Goodrow
D- Hedman, Weber, Petry, McDonagh, Sergachev, Chiarot, Cernak, Gustafsson, Edmundson
G- Price, Vasilevskiy
Key Abbreviations:
xGF/60= expected goal for per 60 minutes of ice time
GF/60= goals for per 60 minutes of ice time
SC/60= Scoring Chances per 60 minutes of ice time
If you have any additional questions, make sure to reach out to me on Twitter or in our NHL room at the RotoBaller slack chat!
NHL Player News and Updates
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