Welcome to the first edition of the Daily Fantasy Hockey Morning Coffee. My goal in these pieces will be to offer you my initial thoughts on each upcoming slate of games. My picks represent what I’m thinking on any given morning for large field tournaments using FanDuel scoring rules. I hope to have each piece published by 3pm M-F to give you an idea of when you can expect new content from me. After editing XN Sports for the past four years, I can’t wait to get back to my own writing here on Sporfolio. Let’s have a great season together!
One major change to FanDuel scoring this season is the end of using plus/minus as a scoring category.
Here is the new FanDuel NHL scoring system:
Forwards/Defensemen
Assists (A) 8
Blocked Shots (Bks) 1.6
Goals (G) 12
Power Play Assists (Ppa) 0.5
Power Play Goals (Ppg) 0.5
Shots On Goal (Sh) 1.6
Short Handed Assists (Sha) 2
Short Handed Goals (Shg) 2
Goalies
Goals Against (Ga) -4
Shutouts (So) 8
Saves (Saves) 0.8
Wins (W) 12
The daily fantasy hockey morning coffee may also offer, for better or worse, a morning glimpse at the corralling of a three-year old and one-year old before they are off to school as I dig through what will make the meat of my picks. Example: My three-year old wants to fly. He’s trying to fly, right now. In fact, he now has a blue cast on his left arm because he lacks any of the fear we should have when jumping from high places. Ironic that his Halloween costume this year is a mix of Batman and Captain America, two heroes who can’t actually fly. He also has a difficult time pronouncing his “b’s” so he has been calling his costume “crapman.” So while I jot down some of my morning coffee notes and picks, I may be interrupted with a “crapman” line or two.
Back to DFS hockey. Please keep in mind that the picks I offer will be FanDuel specific and while there may be some crossover to sites like DraftKings and FantasyAces, picks don’t perfectly translate from site to site.
Opening Day Strategy
Let’s start the season with a quick breakdown of how I approach the games. When constructing DFS lineups, I start by simply looking at the Vegas lines for all of the games on that day’s slate. This serves multiple purposes. For starters, we want to choose a winning goaltender for a chance at cashing. From there, we can look at goaltender’s salary and try to figure out how many shots a particular G will see on a given night. We want the win … we also want our G to see a lot of shots when we’re looking to place high in a GPP. But, it also can serve as a great way to choose a goaltender/team to attack if the favorite to win the game has plugged in their backup as we can deploy different strategies depending on the game. We can get into this more as the season progresses and the need presents itself.
Since we don’t always know what particular goaltender will play on any given night – much like waiting for MLB lineups to be released – we can use the Vegas lines as a jumping off point.
Always make sure to confirm lines and starting goalies before lineups lock.
Now to our morning coffee:
Note: Players such as Patrick Kane, Sidney Crosby, Alex Ovechekin, etc. are always in play depending how much you feel like spending on one position.
Changes, changes, changes. Opening night presents us with a limited slate and – as I write this – lines not 100 percent solidified and power play units that remain a bit uncertain. We have to see how personnel changes will change our DFS outlook on certain teams. With that said, let’s try to crack this opening night DFS egg.
I am intrigued by Edmonton’s new first line of Lucic/McDavid/Eberle and am certainly considering some sort of stack.
Full line stack (with some basic stats from last season, for what’s it worth):
McDavid $7,600 (16G, 32A, 14PPP, 105 Shots, 15.2 Shooting%)
Lucic $5,700 (20G, 35A, 124 Shots, 16.1 Shooting%)
Eberle $6,300 (25 G, 22A, 11PPP, 173 Shots, 14.5 Shooting%)
Or, if Lucic doesn’t particularly excite you, we can go with a C,W,D PP stack: