Welcome to the Wednesday edition of the daily fantasy hockey morning coffee. Tonight we have a small five-game slate to work with:
Toronto Maple Leafs @ Florida Panthers
Carolina Hurricanes @ Pittsburgh Penguins
Philadelphia Flyers @ St. Louis Blues
Montreal Canadiens @ Tampa Bay Lightning
Los Angeles Kings @ Vancouver Canucks
I like Toronto tonight for my cash and GPPs lineups. Toronto has averaged 2.70 goals per game in the month of December and have have averaged a league best 37.3 shots per game. Toronto has also scored seven power play goals this month. Florida isn’t normally a team I look to pick on, but they have allowed 2.92 goals against per game this month — 10th-worst in the NHL. For the season Toronto has averaged an NHL seventh-best 2.94 goals for per game.
Florida has lost to the Maple Leafs twice this season: 2-3 and 1-6. As a caveat, Vegas sees this game in Florida’s favor with a 5.5 over/under and their first line of Seth Griffith/Aleksander Barkov/Jaromir Jagr makes for an intriguing tournament option as they come at a good price and will skate together on Florida’s top line and first power play unit.
There are multiple ways we can look to deploy Toronto skaters tonight. The first is the use of the Matthews line:
Zach Hyman $4.2K (5G, 7A, 78 SOG)
Auston Matthews $7K (16G, 10A, 8 PPP, 121 SOG)
Connor Brown $3.7K (6G, 6A, 2 PPP, 54 SOG)
The Matthews line makes a nice GPP stack tonight. This line (in a limited sample size) has an xGF/60 of 3.78, and 12.5 SCF/60 since they’ve skated together. Hyman and Brown won’t see power play time which limits the upside and why I would only consider this for GPPs. I do like that Hyman has taken 18 shots over his past five games and that Brown has two goals and one assist over his past two games. Matthews has three goals and one assist over his past five games.
We have a bigger sample size with James van Riemsdyk/Tyler Bozak/Mitchell Marner. This line has an xGF/60 of 3.54 and 13.51 SCF/60. This line has accounted for 20 goals and 343 shot attempts for this season. While Matthews is the clear one off play on the Toronto end, this line stack offers a little more safety as Marner and JVR will see power play time together.
Finally, the line that offers us the best correlation with even strength and power play time is the