Hello, and Happy Tuesday. Today also happens to be my wife’s birthday, so shoutout to all of the my wives out there. Last night’s hockey slate was a bunch of butt – especially if you ate that Jeremy Swayman chalk – but today, luckily (mercifully, even) is a new day.
Looks like we have some fun games on the schedule (Habs-Canes!, Wild-Sabres!). As usual, there are a million options, though I’ll try to do a better job of narrowing things down. Simply listing every line probably isn’t all that helpful, as it turns out.
Let’s take a gander.
Best NHL DFS Stacks for Tuesday
- DET1 (Raymond/Larkin/Arvidsson)
- NYR1 (Lafreniere/Perrault/Zibanejad)
- NYR2 (Kartye/Dorofeyev/Miller)
- OTT3 (Amadio/Pinto/Giroux)
- STL1 (Holloway/Thomas/Snuggerud)
- STL2 (McTavish/Buchnevich/McMichael)
- MIN2 (Shabanov/Kaprizov/Yurov)
- BUF2 (Ostlund/Quinn/Benson)
- TOR1 (Marchenko/Roslovic/Matthews)
- LAK1 (Byfield/Panarin/Kempe)
- NJ1 (Mantha/Hughes/Bratt)
- VGK1 (Eichel/Stone/Barbashev)
There’s an overwhelming amount of playable stuff on a 9-game slate, and we don’t have all day, do we folks? Maybe you do. Maybe I do. But do we? Probably not.
In terms of value, Detroit looks pretty good here, facing an Ottawa team on the second half of a back-to-back. The Sens were stingy last year, but they’re also down a couple of key defensemen in Jake Sanders and Artem Zub. I remember the early Simpsons episode where Marge goes to prom with Artem Zub. Linus Ullmark is probably getting a night off, as well, so it’s probably Samuel Ersson in net.
Dylan Larkin looks primed for his season debut for the Red Wings after his offseason trade demand to one of the league’s 3 best teams. They did not, in fact, heed his demand, so here he is. Lines pairing Larkin with Lucas Raymond were predictably productive last year. Safe to expect them to do damage with Viktor Arvidsson ($5,300), fresh over from Boston. $17,200 is reasonable for a top line playing around 20 minutes a game, and all 3 of them are also on the top power play unit. Ottawa killed around 75% of power plays last year, the 29th-best mark in the league. Another way to say that would be 4th-worst, which, I suppose, lands a little better.
I don’t really have much interest in this newfangled DET2, I’d rather just sub Alex DeBrincat ($7,600) in for one of the aforementioned top-liners to make it a PP stack. Mo Seider is great, but $6,600 is a bit rich.
Ottawa was a stack you probably had to have last night. Not necessarily expecting a repeat, but OTT3 (Pinto/Amadio/Giroux) is a decently productive bunch that’ll run you just $11,300.
The Rangers are another source of value because it always seems like they are. The problem is they are generally just Not Very Good, but it also looks like they’re dodging Ilya Sorokin in this one, which helps. Semyon Varlamov is not quite Ilya Sorokin, as it turns out.
It’s early – 4 games – but the Rangers have played well so far. They’re 3-1, at least. NYR1 (Lafreniere/Perreault/Zibanejad) is averaging 3 xG/60, while the new-look NYR2 (Kartye/Dorofeyev/Miller) has really crushed (4.2!), albeit in a wee 14-minute sample.
Even with Sorokin carrying them, the Isles were not particularly good defensively a season ago (2.68 xGA/60, 30th-best). This feels gross, especially if they’re chalk, but maybe the Rangers have a little something this year. Fortunately, it’s a huge slate, and it doesn’t really look like they’ll be super popular.
The Rangers’ top two lines are both cheaper than $14,000, is the thing. I kinda like a PP1 combination (Lafreniere/Dorofeyev/Zibanejad/Adam Fox).
The Blues’ Holloday/Thomas/Snuggerud trio (3.63 xG/60) is off to a hot start, and they’ll face a Blackhawks defense that allowed the most xGA/60 a season ago. Chicago was terrible 5v5, and their PK was significantly worse after they traded Connor Murphy and Jason Dickinson to Edmonton at the deadline. Spencer Knight complicates the matchup a bit. I’m not huge on St. Louis’ new L2 (McTavish/Buchnevich/McMichael), but I don’t mind McTavish as a cheap one-off or attachment to your STL PP1 stack.
The Canes haven’t looked great early on. Maybe they’re still hungover. The good news is Jakub Dobes looks like he’ll be pretty chalky against them, giving you a natural #leverage angle with the champs. CAR2 (Hall/Stankoven/Blake) is intact from last year, and this line was a machine (3.7 xG/60). CAR1 (Aho/Svechnikov/Carrier) has been terrific early on. It’s fine and playable, but give me the slight discount on the more proven CAR2, especially if Dobes is gonna be 15-20% owned. CAR3 (Martinook/Staal/Ehlers) also averaged north of 3 xG/60 last season. The Canes’ scoring is generally spread out, but they can win you the slate if you get them right.
You can always talk me into the Minnesota CatDogs, of course, even though they’ve got some new faces. MIN2’s Russian trio (Yurov/Shabanov/Kaprizov) saves you about $3,500 from MIN1, while Kaprizov and Shabanov have PP1 correlation with Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson-Ek, and Quinn Hughes. The issue is Buffalo was elite on the PK last season (81.9%), the 29th-worst mark in the league.
Similar story with the Sabres, as their power play is really just BUF2 (Ostlund/Quinn/Benson) + Tage Thompson and Rasmus Dahlin. There’s nothing special or terrible about the matchup, but that second line trio ($12,600) is so cheap you can pretty easily play two of them + Thompson and Dahlin or 3 + 1. I love this? Dahlin is a great play in any scenario, even as a one-off. Owen Power ($3,400) is a cheaper alternative to Dahlin who projects pretty well.
Looks like we’ll have some ownership on Toronto for a home matchup against Nashville. Auston Matthews ($8,200) may be the most popular skater on the slate, but we’re still looking at a second line (Tavares/McKenna/Nylander) more expensive than the top line with Matthews/Roslovic/Marchenko. There’s talent everywhere, but with McKenna struggling and at risk of a demotion, I just have more faith in TOR1 to do consistent damage. There are also enough quality cheap lines to just jam in Matthews/Nylander/Marchenko on a power play stack.
The Kings are generally abominable but I continue to think the Byfield/Panarin/Kempe top line should be fine. The matchup doesn’t suit the Kings’ power play at all, so a straight LAK1 stack is fine. Florida’s best defensive center – Aleksander Barkov – is on IR again, and we know Jacob Markstrom can Go Full Tanner Houck at any time.
The team with the highest implied total would be My Vegas Golden Knights, who hit the road to take on the Kraken. Seattle was ghastly (31st-best!, aka 1st-worst) at killing power plays last season, while Vegas was productive (24.5% on the man advantage). VGK1 (Eichel/Stone/Barbashev) is the most expensive line on the slate ($20,900), so it’s tough. Pairing them with something like OTT3 can work, I reckon.
But, given the Kraken’s aforementioned trouble stopping the power play, you probably want a PP combination (Stone/Hertl/Marner/Eichel/Theodore). I should note that VGK3 (Hertl/Connelly/Olofsson) has been excellent so far – and is cheap – but the path is narrower if they’re only out there for 12-14 minutes together.
I suppose you can play the Devils, though Utah is no pushover defensively with Karel Vejmelka in there. Fine with a power play combination, something like Hughes/Bratt/Evangelista. Dougie Hamilton ($4,200) is a reasonable D value.
If you need something really cheap and definitely disgusting, CHI PP1 (Nazar/Kane/Bertuzzi/Byram) isn’t bad. Isn’t great, either.
Noah Simpson is a New England-based DFS writer who has spent the better part of a decade obsessing over MLB DFS. He got his start playing DFS recreationally before realizing he was spending more time building spreadsheets than actually watching games, and decided to make it official. At DFSBuild, Noah covers MLB DFS strategy with a focus on finding edges that casual players overlook. When he’s not staring at Statcast data, he’s somewhere on a hiking trail in Maine with his two dogs, Sandboy and Johnner, who are undefeated at ignoring his lineup advice, because they are dogs. They don’t have the cognitive or motor skills required to operate a computer, let alone process complex theories and information.
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