Dec 27th NHL DFS Slate Breakdown

With holiday travels continuing for the MSP crew, I opted out of a solo pod for the eight game Return To The Ice slate in the NHL. Compared to most slate writeups, this is far more games than usual, so expect the team-level writeups to be briefer than usual.

A couple unique things about this slate:

1. All road teams are not allowed to travel on the 26th. Meaning each opponent will be flying into their respective cities this afternoon, a clear disruption to the norms players and coaches are used to.

2. Because of this three day break, however, nearly all teams are expected to host a AM skate. Given the timing of this, I may not have the west coast teams at the time of posting, but it is one of the more “available” days from an information perspective.

I have added a little flag in the top left of each team-view that is RED (no AM skate to confirm 5v5 lines) or GREEN (there was an AM skate). Assume that PP1s are my best guess based on most recent game and/or injury updates, and I will walk through any particularly interesting situations as it pertains to PP time in the team preview.

This eight-game slate locks at 7:00PM EST with four games, two more at 8:00PM EST, and then 9:30PM and 10:30PM starts out West.

If you’re new and haven’t seen this worksheet before, see this writeup for a further walkthrough.

Let’s dive in. All stats from naturalstattrick.com unless otherwise noted.

Odds and Totals from DK Sportsbook

Chicago (+140) @ Buffalo (-166) ||| o6.0 -105

The Hawks travel east to Buffalo as a +140 dog to the team that finally snapped a 13-game drought with a 7-1 trouncing of the hapless Islanders. The Sabres are clearly the better team here, on paper, but the recent form for the Blackhawks has been pretty decent, with the team finally scoring a bit at 5v5 and a slightly above average xGA figure over the last 10. Along with the DET-TOR matchup, this game clearly leads the way in actual-goal pace based on the rainbow sheet, with a nice 6.9 mark when combining the fact that neither team can buy a save, but is filling the net. For the Sabres, this is largely driven by the six 5v5 goal outburst on Long Island last game, but… we’ll take what we can get around here.

Bedard is still searching for the volume he showed last year, but at the very least he is (barely) leading the team in FPPG over the past 10, with a shade over 10 DKPts per game. For $6900, that won’t cut it, but the ceiling is absolutely there, and he’s finally paired with Tyler Bertuzzi, the offseason acquisition we all deemed a match made in heaven with whom he has played 80 of his 552 5v5 minutes this season.

In that small sample, compared to his season-long mark of iCF/60 of 11.8 (last year 15.0), Bedard has a 16.3 iCF/60 when skating with Bertuzzi at 5v5. For $10.5k, against Buffalo, with L1 PP1 correlation, I’m intrigued by taking a shot on the upward ascension of Bedard after an unbelievably weak start to the season.

Seth Jones is back in the lineup after a lengthy absence, his two games to date have seen him back to running PP1 but not doing much with the opportunity. He’s a fine play, but not necessary on an 8-game slate without much of a discount in play.

MOODS’ DUDES: Connor Bedard ($6900), Tyler Bertuzzi ($3600)

Our Sabres ran a AM skate on Friday, showing the same lines as Monday’s win vs. the Islanders. SEVEN goals, can you believe it? They look to continue the hot streak against Chicago, who in the past two weeks have put up 5 and 4 goals against the Islanders themselves. I think I found the problem, Lou… your team sucks.

On the Sabres side of things, the Jack Quinn we were promised has shown up in after a series of healthy scratches. In his four games (the instigator to his scratches? That Colorado Game… that was in December, too. Can you believe it? A lifetime of losing ago…) back he’s scored three times, earned his way back to a PP1 job, and is playing north of 16 minutes per night after a season average in the 14s.

At just $2800, he’s a clear value, but the field will not be slow to react given the matchup and profile of Jack Quinn. With a very-reasonably-priced JJ Peterka as his L2 PP1 teammate, and Dylan Cozens also slotting in below $5000 on DraftKings, I’m particularly interested in whether the field goes all the way here, or if the PP1 draws the most attention.

Rasmus Dahlin has been dealing with injuries, too, but in the games he has played over the last ten he’s been the Sabres best player and it is not particularly close. At $7300, I’m most interested in his ownership. The top line features Jason Zucker, who has been great in the Blue & Gold all year and still is just $4300, but both Tage and Tuch are pretty pricey to play in a $19k stack, and I suspect the field will get here on Friday.

MOODS’ DUDES: Jack Quinn ($2800), Rasmus Dahlin ($7300)

Toronto (-155) @ Detroit (+130) ||| o6.0 -110

Toronto shakes up their lineup after losing to Winnipeg before the break, moving Holmberg to center Knies-Nylander and Patches up with Tavares-Marner, leaving a L3 of McMann-Domi-NRob.

A clear loser here is Nylander, as Holmberg is not up to the task of being an NHL 2C, though Nylander will likely skate every PP minute Toronto gets, so the 5v5 role matters a bit less for him.

Toronto is on the periphery of the top teams on the rainbow sheet, so there’s a bit to like there with the matchup even with a possible New Coach Bump helping Detroit after the hiring of Todd McLellan.

My personal lean is toward L3 values, as Matthews’ absence should get all three of them some PP time (that Nylander will siphon off from one of them), but all three are capable of a shots bonus, they’re pretty talented offensively, and in limited minutes (58 together) have outscored opponents 6-3 on a 60% xG share.

Marner has been unbelievable this season, his normal concerns with shot volume aside. In his 750 minutes, only Martin Necas has posted a better primary point rate (when adjusted for cohort, as I set age ranges for each player for comparison to try and spot breakout youngsters). The list after him? Jack Hughes, Laine (10 GP), Kaprizov, and Dylan Guenther. hmmm, I wonder if that’ll come up again later.

MOODS’ DUDES: Mitch Marner ($7700), Max Domi ($2600), Nick Robertson ($2500)

Detroit brings in Todd McLellan to replace Derek Lalonde, which if history is any indicator should help more on the defensive side of the puck than the offensive. This soon, however, all we can really go on is vibes, as clearly the mood in Detroit is dour after yet another season is heading down the drain.

Some good news for the Wings is that Simon Edvinsson should be back in the lineup, forming a truly competent top pair with Mo Seider, while Ben Chiarot’s presence after a brief absence is less good, but at least seems likely to take a roster spot away from William Lagesson, the revenge matchup we were all waiting for on Friday.

Even without Matthews, Toronto is a top defensive team in the league, and I’ll be pretty comfortable any slate that I don’t click in Detroit Red Wings. Larkin has been shooting a good amount as of late, and getting absolutely nothing to show for it, so I would build around him if I had to, though we didn’t get lines this AM, just PP units, so check those combos in warmups if you do insist on DET tonight.

MOODS’ DUDES: Dylan Larkin ($6600)

Carolina (+110) @ New Jersey (-130) ||| o5.5 -118

The top two teams in the league, based on the betting market, meet up after the holiday break, and we have all of the info. It’s very hard to have much interest in the Carolina side, as it’s unlikely that this game truly shoots out for 8+ goals, and New Jersey is on such a strong run defensively that even Carolina has a shot attempts Index in the red. For the Corsi Canes, that’s incredibly rare and gives even fewer outs to a true had-to-have-it DFS night if the shot bonuses are not in play.

Over their past 10 games, the Devils have given up 17 shots or fewer in 6 of those games, the others being onslaughts of 19, 20, 20, and 24. It’s reaching “holy shit” territory with these guys.

MOODS’ DUDES: Sheldon Keefe. He’s not on Carolina, even, but he’s one of my dudes. Toronto is a bunch of donkeys. I’m sorry, Auston. You deserve better!

It’s not like you can’t play Jack Hughes at $9k against Carolina, on a run of 13 games where over half are 10+ shot attempt efforts and his peak is 22 (!!) against Columbus, but I also don’t really get the appeal of spending all that money unless you’re intentionally trying to build different. Dougie #revenge and Bratt L1 PP1 would make for good spend-up stacking options, as I don’t think a 12 shot, 1 assist performance (which would be totally fine for $9k!) is in the cards here for Hughes.

Brother Luke is a good price & volume play as well, as his shot rate has been really solid and he’s producing points, making good on his sky-high potential as a prospect and making up the best “third pair” in the league with Brett Pesce. This team is utterly ridiculous.

MOODS’ DUDES: Jack Hughes ($9000), Dougie Hamilton ($6500), Luke Hughes ($3100)

Boston (-162) @ Columbus (+136) ||| o6.0 -118

After an injury scare on Monday, Pastrnak is good to go on Friday, in his usual role with his usual linemates. Brad Marchand, on the other top six line, is on another heater, actually matching Pasta’s volume output with an even better actual fantasy output over the last ten games. Marchand is $2700 cheaper, as well, and possibly has better linemates than Pasta. I prefer Marchand straight up, but have no issue playing both. Columbus is awful and has no answers, rolling out 11F 7D once again and doing so in possibly the weirdest fashion I can recall. That both Pasta and Marchand are rolling gives us several cheap options to sort through in a Boston build, with Geekie probably standing out the most of the bunch, as he’s posted the best shot rate on the year and is averaging 10 FPPG over his last 10 at just $3.5k.

MOODS’ DUDES: David Pastrnak ($8800), Brad Marchand ($6100)

It’s not super likely to be this marked a difference between the top four and the other 3 with Damon Severson back from being a healthy scratch, but CBJ clearly just wants to roll the 11F they feel the best about, lean heavily on their top four defensively, and let the third d-pair rotate in and around.

Denton Mateychuk steps into the top four as a really interesting prospect stylistically but not so much statistically. With Zach Werenski serving as the end-boss for fantasy relevance, anyway, there’s nothing I like for value on CBJ’s blue line.

Up front, Kirill Marchenko is on a bender, 4th on the slate in expected FPPG over the past ten, underproducing that output only slightly (67 attempts, 3 goals, 10 assists) and priced incredibly reasonably. Monahan makes sense, too, for just a bit more, but Marchenko is the player to watch on this CBJ side, with Voronkov chipping in some as well as a L1 PP1 third wheel.

Kent Johnson is saddled with Olivier at 5v5 and Adam Fantilli is strapped to the bench in most situations, though I would consider the latter in game stacks at just $3300. Fantilli’s prospect profile is incredible and he’s actually comfortably above average with both his shot rate and rate of compiling DKPts, though both are down vs. his rookie season.

MOODS’ DUDES: Kirill Marchenko ($5600), Adam Fantilli ($3300)

Nashville (-130) @ St. Louis (+110) ||| o5.5 -105

I should have considered when creating my red/green color scheme that I would need one for Nashville specifically, in that they ran a morning skate and even showed us pretty pictures of players skating, but told us absolutely nothing of substance.

I’m anticipating no changes to the NSH side, as a slight favorite in a low total matchup. Their top line is perfectly correlated and will run you $19k, more when adding Josi, and in reality this screams out BUFFALO to me, in that it looks cheap at first glance, but then you consider you need to mix in the actual good player on the team, the defenseman, and it gets out of hand quickly for a matchup that isn’t a ton of fun. With my interest largely coming on the other side of this one, I’ll pass. STL has been solid defensively, but the Preds’ top line can of course score from anywhere.

Forsberg is a viable one-off, he’s been one of the best fantasy players in the league in the month of December, as the team goes from “absolutely can’t score” to “sometimes they score” with the flip of the calendar. The team as a whole might be rebounding out of their putrid start, but this is the fifth time the team has “peaked” as a decent offensive 5v5 team this year and each time they fall right back to earth:

MOODS’ DUDES: Filip Forsberg ($7400)

Well well well, St. Louis. AM skate today introduced a new wrinkle to the PP1, with Dylan Holloway taking the right halfwall opposite Jordan Kyrou, shifting Robert Thomas to a Sidney Crosby-esque netfront role where he’ll probably do some facilitating from below the dots.

One thing to note is that Cam Fowler has manned the PP1 upon arrival in STL, and while my NST thing doesn’t know what to do with players tagged to multiple teams (I sometimes go in and pull “only the games since they joined” and add them manually), I can assure you he’s not popping as a high volume player. Fowler is who he is, and for our purposes that’s actually quite nice. You can rest assured that Fowler will be facilitating shot attempts from the other four teammates on the PP1, and while he can pick up assists and maybe luck his way into a blocks bonus, he’s never going to be a DFS priority, even at $2800.

My interest is limited to the PP1 on the Blues side, as they are all quite affordable, but Dylan Holloway is a no-doubt top play at just $3.5k. On a per-minute basis, he has the best DKPt rate on the entire team, better than even Kyrou, and is doing a bit of everything at the moment. For you fantasy grinders, if he’s somehow on your waiver wire, grab him now, as he even adds hits to the mix.

St. Louis is a team clearly on the rise since the hiring of Jim Montgomery, a home date with the bottom-dwelling Preds does nothing to dissuade me at these prices.

Under Bannister, this is how the top three lines fared:

And under Montgomery (this is the easiest way to break things down on hockeyviz by coach, hence the strange setup):

It’s a night-and-day Blues team, and this version is Good. They’re not great, but I’ll take Good in this matchup at these prices! I’m going to go against the rainbow, which has STL as the worst matchup of the day by any metric, on this particular spot.

MOODS’ DUDES: Jordan Kyrou ($6000), Dylan Holloway ($3500)

Minnesota (+145) @ Dallas (-175) ||| o5.5 -125

Minnesota skated this AM, where it was confirmed that Kaprizov will not play and the PP units you see are correct, with Foligno sliding up and PP2 using two defensemen. The 5v5 lines are a mystery, with my best guess shown as Boldy moving into the Kaprizov role, Foligno up to L2, and Trenin up to L3. Turns out Kaprizov is difficult to replace.

There’s never going to be a ton of excitement about a matchup with the Stars, but substantially less-so when it’s without Kaprizov. Everyone is worse as a result of his absence.

I get angry whenever I listen to podcasts that disrespect Matt Boldy, however. I think it was Puck Soup this past week that was recounting the 2019 draft in the aftermath of the Kakko trade and Boldy came up. He deserves more respect than “a guy who shouldn’t be the second-best player out of a draft class”, he’s a true superstar.

But I’m not paying $7k against Dallas to prove my point on this slate. See you in the turbo slate?

MOODS’ DUDES: Hurry back, Kirill.

Dallas did not skate and it is an open question whether Logan Stankoven is on the fourth line tonight.

So that’s where we are. I would guess Stankoven reunites with Duchene and Marchment, but it is truly jarring just how impactful the loss of Tyler Seguin has been. I know the rainbow sheet has some time for the Stars here, but when DeBoer is breaking the “top six Colin Blackwell” glass to spark a comeback against the freakin Hockey Club to avoid a three-game skid into the break, I’m going to assertively say things are not going great at the moment. Against one of the league’s best defensive teams that is missing their top offensive weapon? Pass.

Harley might be paired with Miro, and he’s <$4k. I like that. Lundkvist is also showing signs of life, paired with Esa Lindell, playing decent minutes, and shooting a bunch. He’s Colin Miller but in Victory Green. He could disappear into a fine mist at any moment and give you 0.

MOODS’ DUDES: Thomas Harley ($3800)

Colorado (-135) @ Utah HC (+114) ||| o6.0 -120

Colorado has yet to skate but it’s time to get this thing to the presses, so here we go. I’m not expecting any reinforcements to return, as Drouin, Wood, and Kylington all did not travel with the team despite the holiday layoff. I find it cute that they included Landeskog in the list of no-shows too, as sad as that saga has been.

The break did give Colorado the time to give MacKenzie Blackwood $26M, I’ll refrain from commentary.

Utah is absolutely rounding into form while Colorado continues to be a one-line team, and at the moment that one line does not even include both MacKinnon and Rantanen, so it’s a really tough look. MacKinnon is going to have to absolutely explode to make you regret fading him at $10.3k, so congrats in advance to the Mack donkeys on his explosion.

MacKinnon is substantially worse than the bar set by his past three seasons, but sure, let’s keep projecting him like it is 2023.

MOODS’ DUDES: MacKenzie Blackwood’s Agent ($1.3M)

The year is 2029. The Utah Hockey Society (FKA Utah Hockey Guild) lines remain the same.

Dylan Guenther, pretty good. Dylan Guenther, $5.9k. Dylan Guenther, likely to match up with the likes of Parker Kelly and Jere Innala, who are actual bottom six forwards for tonight’s Colorado Avalanche.

Dylan Guenther, in my lineup. As noted earlier, Guenther is putting up an unbelievable season, doubling his age cohort in everything from shot rate to primary point rate, a top-five season when it comes to the latter. He’s a very good player, and Logan Cooley’s ascendance has only helped Guenther’s fantasy outlook. Mikhail Sergachev is on a bender, I’m a bit more skeptical that it lasts, but the points are piling up for him and I like the spot just fine.

MOODS’ DUDES: Dylan Guenther ($5900), Mikhail Sergachev ($5500)

Vegas (-250) @ San Jose (+205) ||| o6.5 -105

Vegas hits the road to San Jose looking likely to roll out a top six with all of Eichel, Karlsson, and Hertl included. It’s a new wrinkle, for sure, but Hertl and Kalrsson have each been excellent in their own right. Karlsson’s season is all the more impressive when you consider that he’s not seen much PP1 time at all, yet is still producing at an elite level. A $12.7k second line in this matchup is pretty intriguing.

L1 is PP1 correlated, so the higher cost makes some sense, but this 19k line is putting up the same expected output over the past ten games as the second line, at 28 xFPPG, and Eichel’s shot and point rate numbers remain pretty poor. He just plays so many minutes that it doesn’t hurt him much. At ownership though, I’m happy to fade.

Shea Theodore is smashing once again, however. What a player. $5.7k is a bit steep, especially if stacking the second line that tends to get a lot more Petro/Hanifin than Theo at 5v5, but I’m not here to tell you not to play Theodore in every instance possible.

MOODS’ DUDES: Shea Theodore ($5700), William Karlsson ($5200), Tomas Hertl ($5000)

San Jose lost William Eklund last game to injury, and as I’m wrapping this up they started their AM skate with no Eklund on the ice. I’m expecting him out, and these lines, though that’s very up in the air on all fronts. Jake Walman is also not on the ice, so these should be the 18 skaters. Vegas is far from a great matchup, and Eklund has been my favorite Shark for the better part of a month now when you consider price and production, so this is a major step downward. The L1 PP1 top line is $17k, which is fair but uninspiring, and I’d like to avoid targeting Vegas with significant underdogs if I can avoid it.

I do think Shakir Mukhamadullin (I got that right first try, if you need further evidence that my brain is broken. I know about ten birthdays of people in my life) is intriguing at the minimum, as he very well could ascend to PP1 (currently basing it on last game without Eklund, where they brought Zetterlund up to the PP1 post-injury) and has a reasonably interesting profile with a clear path to alpha dog minutes. This is the same team that let Jack Thompson run their show for a couple weeks there, and Mukhamadullin is a far superior prospect.

Generally speaking, however, I have too much respect for Vegas to go here tonight. Celebrini has been great but there are several $7000-ish options I like a lot today.

MOODS’ DUDES: Shakir Mukhamadullin ($2500)

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