Welcome back to another 10 game slate of NHL DFS. This looks really wide open – so let’s get into it!
This NHL article is going to focus more on industry-wide NHL projections and ownership, some stuff that looks underowned, and the chalk construction. We’ll close with some game theory and leverage thoughts. Please tag me in discord (Kikikartier) with any feedback. Let’s dig in!
*I will be updating my thoughts and posting industry-consensus sims in NHL discord. so please check back.
This article was updated for lines and injuries at 1 pm ET. Updates will occur throughout the day
Use this article in conjunction with the NHL models and Contest Sims to give yourself a real chance at winning each and every slate.
*There will be multiple updates in discord
*Please consult dailyfaceoff or leftwinglock to verify goalies before lock. I’ll update a few hours before, but not everybody will be confirmed until 15 minutes before they start.
NHL DFS Lines
- There are a few lines at the top of ownership tonight – but I have ownership projected significantly different than the Industry does. I have SJ1 (Celebrini/Smith/Graf) as one of the two highest owned lines of the night at 17%. The other is TOR1 (Matthews/Domi/McMann) at 18%. There will certainly be multiple TOR power play combinations with plenty of ownership tonight as well. TOR2 (Tavares/Kneis/Maccelli) are about 2.5K underpriced for this spot. San Jose is in an incredibly strong spot against this floundering Canucks team – while the Leafs face the red-hot Buffalo Sabres at home. A combination of the two will definitely be the chalk build tonight.
- The other chalky spot we need to discuss is this NSH/BOS game. The Industry has BOS1 (Lindholm/Pastrnak/Geekie) as the highest owned line tonight at 18-20%. I have them at more like 14%. Yes – they blew up last night. However, they’re on a B2B against a NSH team that is far better defensively, in net, and on the PK. The field also knows that BOS is an extremely volatile team due to the number of penalties they commit. I feel that some of their ownership goes to TOR and some of it goes to NSH1 (O’Reilly/Forsberg/Evangelista) on the other side of this game. Boston is volatile, the field knows this too. I also do not mind going to BOS2 (Zacha/Arvidsson/Mittlestadt) or NSH2 (Haula/Stamkos/Bunting) in this game either. They likely both end up in the 2-3% range – with the exception of Arvidsson who probably draws plenty of ownership as a one-off due to his shot volume. I like this game overall, but I have the ownership between BOS1 and NSH1 as 14/10 as opposed to 18/7.
- Ok so let’s talk about the Leafs. William Nylander (6300) may return here, but there was no announcement when they named Woll as the starter – so I’m going to assume he’s still out. As I mentioned – TOR2 is well underpriced here and they are an extremely strong play at 12.6K. I have them at 10% owned, but much of that ownership will be along side the extremely popular Auston Matthews (9400) and Morgan Reilly (4100). You can definitely ditch a big chunk of the ownership by just not playing Matthews. I think you can also go to the BUF side here. BUF1 (Thompson/Tuch/Benson) projects for about 6% ownership tonight and definitely looks underowned against this Leafs team that does not worry me defensively at all. TOR isn’t a particularly penalty-prone team – so I wouldn’t worry about Tuch not having power play exposure. However, you can definitely drop Benson for any of PP Net front Josh Doan (5200), Jason Zucker (5000), or Noah Ostlund (3200). Benson isn’t much of a shooter, but he does have a good history playing with Thompson and racks up assists.
- There’s also multiple well-projected cheap lines you can play in this game. All of BUF2 (McLeod/Zucker/Quinn), BUF3 (Ostlund/Doan/Helenius), and TOR3 (Roy/RobertsonCowan) project as strong point/$ plays at low ownership. This is probably my favorite game of the night and I really like BUF as a lower-owned spot.
- Now let’s talk about the clown show that is VAN/SJ. SJ1 (Celebrini/Smith/Graf) projects as one of the highest owned lines of the night once again. SJ2 (Wennberg/Toffoli/Regenda) also comes in with around 5% ownership as a filler line. We have SJ3 (Misa/Gaudette/Eklund) as a strong value as well. It’s really hard to knock the spot. Celebrini and Smith have been phenomenal together and VAN is just a disaster defensively. However, I would not totally ignore the VAN side. It’s not like the Sharks play a particularly disciplined brand of hockey or have even average goaltending. I definitely do not mind going to VAN1 (Petterson/Kane/DeBrusk) here. Kane might even find his way onto PP1 considering Boeser is out. Who knows. I definitely like some of the VAN depth pieces as well. VAN3 (Blueger/Garland/Ohgren) projects as an ok value and I like this line from a hockey standpoint quite a bit. They should be able to move the puck, create offense, and shoot pretty well. I definitely like Filip Chytil (4200) as well here. My favorite approach is to go with a Chytil/Garland/Ohgren PP2 stack here – as they’re splitting time and will be extremely low owned. If they bang one in, they could easily dominate the PP time for the remainder of the game.
- This slate is super wide open – so it’s going to be hard to go over every spot. However, you can definitely go to MIN here. They are facing the always penalty-prone Blackhawks and – while they have a very good penalty kill – The Wild Power Play has finally started to cook with Quinn Hughes running it. You can certainly go to MIN1 (Hartman/Zuccarello/Kaprizov), MIN2 (Eriksson Ek/Boldy/Johansson), or a MIN Power Play stack tonight. They’re both going to be 6-7% owned and we’ve gone over a ton of sub-12K lines that are playable. I also would not entirely dismiss the Chicago side either. I don’t think it’s crazy to go with a CHI PP stack against this garbage MIN PK. Bedard is expensive at 7900 – but Bertuzzi, Nazar, and Teravainen are all priced down. It’s a large field spot, but I think it’s one of the more interesting ones along with VAN.
- Another contrarian game you can definitely attack is WPG/NJ. Our model has both sides of this game projected as strong values, I tend to agree, Hellebuyck is chalk, and nobody has been any good defensively on either side of this game. The highest owned line in this game looks to be WPG1 (Scheifele/Connor/Iafallo) at around 7%, but there’s a bunch of ways to go here. I definitely like NJ1 (Hischier/Bratt/Meier) tonight against chalky Hellebuyck and the defensively-challenged Jets. I’m still not sold on the health of Jack Hughes (8000), but at 3% owned it’s definitely worth the gamble on him as well. I also think you can go to Cody Glass and Arseny Gritsyuk as a two-man – or with Simon Nemec – as another strong cheap play tonight. Josh Morrissey (5700), Dougie Hamilton (5100), and Simon Nemec (3000) are also three of my favorite defensemen on the slate. I think this game is definitely going overlooked.
- DET2 (Copp/Debrincat/Kane) seems to be getting 10-12% ownership tonight. They’re fine…I guess. That game just kinda sucks.
- They’re priced to the moon – but you can absolutely go to anybody on the Vegas power play tonight against Montreal. The Vegas power play has been elite for a very long time as long as Eichel and Stone are both healthy. This is a pheneomenal spot for them, but you have to pay a huge premium for it. VGK1 (Eichel/Stone/Barbashev), VGK2 (Marner/Dorofeyev/Hertl), or a Vegas Power Play stack are definitely things to consider tonight. They need to score 5-6 to matter, but they can definitely do it here.
- Our model seems to like Dallas. You can certainly go to either DAL1 (Rantanen/Duchene/Johnston) or DAL2 (Hintz/Robertson/Bourque) if you want. They just aren’t real high on my list though – and the coach specifically said they will be shuffling the lines. In fact – I actually prefer the STL side. STL2 (Buchnevich/Kyrou/Neighbours) projects for 5-6% ownership, but they seem fine. I do not mind mixing in Dvorsky or a Schenn/Snuggerud 2-man either. I prefer lower owned value spots though.
- Our tools like the spot for Washington. You can go there if you want – but their lines are just terrible. I really don’t want to play Strome without Ovechkin – nor do I want to play Nic Dowd on a 10 game slate. I’ll just pass on them.
In smaller fields – This is a tough slate. All the chalky spots have some pretty serious volatility to them. I would probably go to MIN1 or VGK1 if I’m being honest. I think there’s the value for it and at least I can trust their respective teams to stay out of the box to some extent – unlike BOS or SJ. You can certainly play either of them though. I think I prefer TOR2 to TOR1 though. I’ll invest less in this Leafs team that is 8 points behind their opponent in the standings thanks.
In larger fields, I love this spot for BUF. I think they look great. MIN1/2/PP, NSH1/2, VAN, and both sides of WPG/NJ are all spots to attack. BOS, SJ, and TOR are fine. There’s just a ton here at such low ownership that it’s hard for me to go eat a bunch of ownership on such a wide open slate. Vegas is also a really interesting spot that the field will not go to. There’s a glut of value lines tonight that project well and tons of cheap skaters. This is a great slate to take advantage of those lower owned, cheap pieces at F/C
NHL Defense
- The field will want to jam in their TOR/SJ/BOS combinations tonight. Therefore, I expect Charlie McAvoy (5000), John Klingberg (4000) and Morgan Reilly (4100) to be 17-20% each. Roman Josi (6900) projects extremely well and looks about 15% owned. Filip Hronek (3700), Gus Forsling (3300), Philip Broberg (3200) and Brandt Clarke (4500) are options that come in around 10%.
- I like MIN – so I obviously love Quinn Hughes (7500). He’s going to play about half the game and have ample opportunites on the power play. I like Rasmus Dahlin (6700) quite a bit as well.
- Dougie Hamilton (5100), Josh Morrissey (5700), Simon Nemec (3000), and Dylan DeMelo (2700) all look very strong at lower ownership. Brock Faber (5300) will also play a ton for MIN.
- You can certainly go to Mo Seider (5800) or Mikhail Sergachev (6100) tonight. They’re both in good power play spots, but their teams are further down my board.
- There are many defensemen from the BUF/TOR game to play. All of Oliver Ekman-Larsson (3000), Troy Stetcher (2600), Bowen Byram (3500), Owen Power (3200), and Matthias Samuelsson (3700) are likely to play over 20 minutes and have a chance to be productive.
- You can definitely go to Q. Hughes/Faber, Josi/Skjei, and McAvoy/Lohrei combos. Nemec/Hamilton and Morrissey/DeMelo seem viable as well.
Synopsis : There’s tons of defensemen to play tonight. I like the TOR/BUF and WPG/NJ games, so there’s plenty of guys I like there. The key for me is to get away from the builds where you just jam cheap defensemen. There’s a lot of upside at the top and in the mid-tier that’s going to go lower owned because everyone wants to play Matthews, Pastrnak, and Celebrini tonight.
NHL Goalies
- I have Connor Hellebuyck (7200) as the chalk around 20%. Darcy Kuemper (7100) and Jeremy Swayman (7800) look like the other guys in double digits
- The sicko play is Ukka-Pekka Luukkonnen (7300) or Spencer Knight (7000). They both have the upside to have big nights
- Confirmed: Grubauer (SEA), Laniken (VAN), Bobrovsky (FLA), Hellebuyck (WPG), Woll (TOR), Gibson (DET), Dobes (MTL), Allen (NJ), Oettinger (DAL), Binnington (STL), Knight (CHI), Wallstedt (8400)
- Unconfirmed: Everyone Else
NHL Stacks and Theory
- TOR1, SJ1, and BOS1 look like the chalk lines tonight. The field will want TOR exposure with either of the two other teams.
- I expect TOR to be the highest owned team due to how well TOR2 projects.
- All of the chalk teams are in volatile spots tonight
- There are so many strong value lines. BUF2, BUF3, TOR2 TOR3, Glass/Gritsyuk/Nemec, CHI2, NSH2, STL2, and VAN3 all project extremely well point/$ at under 13K each. It’s a solid night to spend up on a more expensive team like MIN or VGK
- This looks like a really strong spot for BUF tonight. BUF1 or a BUF PP stack are both very strong plays at low ownership.
- Don’t be afraid to go with NSH1 or something from VAN either. All 3 of these chalky games are super volatile and could go a lot of different ways.
- This is definitely a strong spot for the NSH PP. That game could certainly go completely against Boston.
- Defense is deep tonight, but the field will ignore a lot of high-ceiling plays like Morrissey, Dahlin, and Q. Hughes in order to play guys like Morgan Reilly and John Klingberg.
NHL Synopsis
For smaller fields – this is a hard slate because it’s so wide open and the chalk is so volatile. There’s no clear best way to go. I like going to MIN1/PP, but I would just do whatever your sims and projections say.
In larger fields – I really like BUF, NSH, and the NJ/WPG game. NSH1 will have some ownership, but the others will not have much at all. The chalk teams are fine, but I am definitely lowest on TOR1 of the chalky stuff.
*Line Data is drawn from moneypuck.com:
https://moneypuck.com/lines.htm