Friday Dec 19th NHL DFS Slate Breakdown

This is more of a writeup than a breakdown. A breakdown is what I do at the end of every slate. Not to be confused with a crashout, which is what I do during the slates.

It’s been a tough week after a tough month. The podcast has been good and the newsletter is even better, because you don’t have to listen to 45 minutes of DJ in this format.

We keep moving, however, because good things await just ahead, including the holidays. The MSP schedule should remain unimpacted by holiday travel, though New Year’s Eve/Day leads to some odd scheduling, so there may be live shows in place of podcasts during that week. More to come, but we’ll be back on your feeds for a Tuesday show, and maybe even for Saturday’s slate on YouTube. The Morning Skate Pod Discord is the best place to keep up to date (DM me @FakeMoods on Twitter, or on Discord #moods13)

On to Friday, where five games await us.

The main slate starts at 7PM EST with two games and two more at 9PM. DAL @ ANA serves as our late night hammer on Friday, a 10PM start.

Reminder that all of the below information is as-of Thursday (or earlier) practices, and we could get updated news during AM skates. We are in a brutal stretch of the schedule with the holiday break and the NHL needing to cram in a normal schedule without ~three weeks of days in February to use, so nearly every team is playing their third game in four or five days, meaning practice news is limited. Stay tuned for AM skates and pre-game skates, and don’t ignore coach quotes if you’re really taking this seriously. You never know where a useful usage nugget could come from!

I keep lists of beat writers for every team in the league, if you want a headstart in checking your stacks and your goalies. The NHL one includes all 32 teams and is useful in the lead up to a big slate, or as your Twitter homepage.

https://x.com/FakeMoods/lists

The rainbow sheet functions by calculating performances on a game-by-game basis while adjusting for opponent to generate a performance above baseline (that accounts for schedule strength). I then line up each team offensively with their opponent defensively to generate the matchups displayed below. All stats are all L10 games 5v5 stats, which also means there are factors specifically unaccounted such as current lineup notes (injuries/returns) and special teams.

All stats from naturalstattrick.com unless otherwise noted.

Odds and Totals from DK Sportsbook

Carolina (-122) @ Florida (+102) ||| o5.5 -125

Carolina didn’t practice on Thursday, so Wednesday’s lines from a convincing 4-1 win over a… suddenly resurgent (where did this come from?) Nashville Predators squad are what I am expecting. That said, Jordan Martinook did not finish the game, so consider him questionable. I do not think there’s much riding on his availability, unless you’re really gung-ho about the Florida third line for some reason against Jordan Staal. Ok then.

This Jaccob Slavin situation is fascinating, in that Shayne Gostisbehere could not be any more obvious of an unbelievable play in this cirumstance, and the mere presence of Jaccob Slavin has him significantly underprojected, in my opinion. Slavin at the current moment is on some sort of modified rehab plan, where “sports science” is at the controls, telling RBA how much he can actually use Slavin. Since his return, Slavin has skated 14:31 and 16:47, a far cry from the normal 22-23 he usually plays. This means Gostisbehere, yes, has to deal with K’Andre Miller and Sean Walker still, but has 22-23 minutes in his bag nonetheless. Gostisbehere has always been an elite rates defenseman whose main question was a limited 5v5 role with PP production. Those rates, where Gostisbehere was ~30% better than the league average at generating DKPts/minute from 2022-25, have skyrocketed in 2025-26. Gostisbehere in 24 games played has a DKPt rate 55% better than average, thanks to a 10% bump in his shot rate and a primary point rate 3x the league average.

Gostisbehere is turning in one hell of a season, and his recent production doesn’t show it whatsoever. At $5200, he’s not a true “best” play on the slate, as despite these rates and this role, his median outcome is more in the 7-8 DKPts range, but I love taking these soft interactions to my advantage. And with a long history of elite rates, this short-term usage spike as Slavin rounds back into shape is extremely appealing to me, in a good matchup against a poor Florida team.

Over his last ten games, Shayne Gostisbehere has launched 46 shots at the net… only 26% of them have hit the net. At the absolute minimum, he should be in the 35-40% range, which is on the lower end for a defender and right in line with his recent averages.

As my strategy depends on things coming together for Gostisbehere, I don’t have a strong preference between line 1 (where his PP correlation will hit) and line 2 (where so long as Miller-Walker remain the top pair, Gost-Chatfield will predominantly play at 5v5 with CAR2). Jackson Blake is a nice mini-stack partner, as you can get the best of both worlds with PP1 exposure and L2 run of play. You’re hoping for Jordan Staal to lose the faceoff so he has to change quickly, but the slight risk factor is made up for by the fact that Blake seems to play the full PP2 shift with his line, so any PP1 time he gets is already a bonus.

Sebastian Aho has been relatively poor this season, but the shot rate is almost exactly on pair with last year. Wednesday’s breakout game could be a better sign of things to come, or it could be a red herring in the midst of a relatively poor fantasy season to-date. Seth Jarvis has three games above 15.5 DKPts in his last 29 games, after clearing 20 in 3-of-4 to start the year. It’s been tough sledding for him, and for $7.4k you really need 20+ to be in the hunt for GPPs. I prefer Andrei Svechnikov who is $2000 less than his linemates despite being a much better volume shooter, probably because he’s mired in a 12-game goal drought. Over this stretch, only Anthony Cirelli in the NHL has more ixGs than Svechnikov’s 3.98 without a goal.

MOODS’ DUDES: Andrei Svechnikov ($5300), Shayne Gostisbehere ($5200), Jackson Blake ($4400)

Florida lost Evan Rodrigues to injury on Wednesday, and an update on his status is expected on Friday. In an already-obscene matchup, this would make the bottom six even more unplayable.

Florida has been getting production from their top six forwards, especially Verhaeghe and Bennett who started the season very slowly. There was a time to pick on the Hurricanes, but it is not October anymore:

With Slavin now back, albeit limited, I don’t see any reason to bet on this being a positive environment for Florida. Furthermore, this PP1-correlated 2nd line is $18100, up there with the top stacks on the slate. I don’t think the leverage is worth it. If you want to try FLA1, at least Eetu is very cheap and has been good yet owed some positive regression, while Lundell has been good, Reinhart excellent, and the line is just $15300.

Any bet on Florida is largely speculative, so you might as well think about a cheap defenseman like Aaron Ekblad or Jeff Petry if you like Florida to win this game, as Carolina’s shot volume could lead to elevated block counts, and at least those two guys shoot the puck on occasion. I don’t see a reason to go Seth Jones, but he would also qualify if you really just want a giga-FLA stack.

MOODS’ DUDES: Anton Lundell ($5000), Aaron Ekblad ($3300)

Vancouver (+120) @ NY Islanders (-142) ||| o5.5 -115

I’m pretty much shit out of luck when the other Elias Pettersson becomes a fantasy-viable defenseman, but for now I am fortunate to be able to ignore him. I can’t get his stats to show up in this NST Player thing that fixes for accents and the like, thanks to the same-name thing. The real Elias Pettersson is close to a return, but will not play on Friday barring a change from the tone of Thursday’s answer to the question.

Conor Garland and Jake DeBrusk flipped spots in practice on Thursday, but Garland is $1000 more with similar xFPPG numbers and lesser rates. The Islanders will remain without Bo Horvat in this one, so NYI is certainly a team you can attack, but the league’s worst team doesn’t feel like a particularly promising spot to lead me into the battle.

Kiefer Sherwood is in the midst of one of his bigger donkey sprees, but unlike last year he’s not shooting 30%. Tough break. Evander Kane has an embarrassingly high shot rate, and for just $4k is the exact sort of player I want to one-off in my lineups. 5 shots and an assist is a smash here, and Kane can have 0.08 ixGs and still hit 5 SOG. He’s a dying breed in the DFS space, so don’t forget about him if you’re in a pinch.

Defensively, the Quinn Hughes trade has been written about from every perspective at this point, and it’s too late in the night for me to really dive in, but the trade was immediately exclusively about Zeev Buium and his trajectory. He’s played 20 and 23 minutes right out of the gate, so he’s getting every opportunity here that he did not in Minnesota. However, Buium has a very efficient game, so the bonuses aren’t really in play. Zeev is the sort of player I’d only play in stacks, yet PP1 and VAN1 seem too expensive to allow Buium to get you a COL stack or something of the sort. Let’s wait for EP40 to return before we take the plunge.

I do not have a ton of respect for this iteration of the Islanders defensively, but I’m comfortable letting Vancouver beat me if that’s what it comes down to.

MOODS’ DUDES: Evander Kane ($4000)

NYI1 is $13000, NYI2 is $11000, and NYI3 is $9500. NYI4 does not get used, and every forward from L1-L3 save J-G Pageau gets PP time.

Unfortunately, outside of the fact that these lines are confirmed from Thursday’s practice, that’s about where the good things to say end. Anders Lee for $4100 has a strong xFPPG + rates profile, but Simon Holmstrom and Pageau are tough stacking partners, and there’s not an obvious defense option either with Schaefer at $6000 and Tony DeAngelo being cursed by the whole Being Tony DeAngelo thing.

L3 totals 20.0 xFPPG in the last ten games and has two PP1 players in Duclair and Shabanov, which for $9500 isn’t bad work. I use ~2x as the “floor multiple” for consideration, save a matchup-based decision or something of the sort, which this barely qualifies. I think Shabanov and especially Ritchie are super talented, they just haven’t done much as-of late on the scoresheet and Patrick Roy had to tell the media Cal Ritchie needed to “get back to basics” and play better defense after a tough showing in Detroit. It’s in play.. but very thin.

I am not a huge Barzal guy, and I fear ownership will pour in on NYI1 given past Barzal experiences. The minutes are excellent without Horvat, but if Jordan Eberle is Kyle Palmieri West, Barzal is Matty Beniers East. Barzal’s primary point rate has even suffered this year to go with his usual middling shot rate. He’s just not a guy I trust, and while I like Emil Heineman, I dislike Drouin roughly the same amount. No thank you, especially with Schaefer hard to spend up for as a correlated alpha D piece.

MOODS’ DUDES: Anders Lee ($4100), Max Shabanov ($3400)

Winnipeg (+200) @ Colorado (-245) ||| o6.5 +114

Winnipeg had the day off on Thursday, a well deserved break after scoring zero goals on Joel Hofer and the Blues. Winnipeg is really going through it right now, with just one win in their last six, two in the last nine, and three in the last fourteen.

Kyle Connor, however, has been as good as ever, with 41 points in 33 games, and Mark Scheifele is having a good season still, as well. Should this team, that is fully healthy now with Hellebuyck back in the fold and their entire starting roster available, really be +200 against anyone, even the presumptive cup favorites in Colorado?

Colorado, for their part, is even trending negatively defensively for just the second time this season, in large part thanks to allowing 5.0 xGs to the Seattle Kraken on Tuesday, of all teams. They eked out a 5-3 win there, but Seattle put on a good effort and Colorado was lucky to survive the first ~half of the game. Winnipeg is quite unlikely to underperfom their xGs, and their alphas are alphaing. I don’t want to play Morrissey, but I kind of want to be a sicko and play Connor-Scheifele.

Stay tuned for AM skate to get a sense of lines, as Gabe Vilardi was moved off this line in St. Louis and Alex Iafallo re-inserted. In a somewhat limited sample, this doesn’t have a big impact on the line, and you can always leave off an Iafallo-type for Cole Perfetti, who has been shooting a bit this year and otherwise can’t buy anything, but should be PP1.

A continued bet-on-talent, Perfetti ended up with Nino and Namestnikov, and Nino especially intrigues me as someone who could keep up with Perfetti’s brain. Nino unfortunately might be showing signs of being cooked, so a full stack here intrigues me less than does adding Perfetti on to the WPG1 duo.

MOODS’ DUDES: Kyle Connor ($8500), Mark Scheifele ($7500), Cole Perfetti ($3700)

No COL changes are expected, meaning Lehkonen-MacKinnon-Necas sticks together. Hooray. I am already regretting the WPG1 interest:

There’s no way to dissuade you from playing Colorado, they are that good. Nathan MacKinnon eats fantasy points like DJ eats the chalk. Aggressively and without regard for his own safety. The dude took the past three years, where he collected DKPts at a rate 89% better than the average forward, and decided to turn the dial up to +122% to see what would happen.

MacKinnon is nearly 4 DK points clear of McDavid on a per-game basis this year, who is a full point ahead of Connor Bedard himself. This gap between 1st and 2nd is the same as the gap between 2nd and 30th. 30th! MacKinnon is keeping Connor McDavid at the same arm’s length as 97 does to Tim Stutzle and Morgan Geekie.

$10000 is a lot to pay for a player against Connor Hellebuyck, but there’s really nothing you want to spend for on this slate. I can poke holes in everything else. I don’t know how you get away from Colorado unless you’re looking to bet on Hellebuyck in goal.

You now even get to add in a very cheap second line that has been productive yet is $13.6k with 2 PP1 players in Landy and Nelson. We are dealing with a lesser sample than COL1, but these guys have been similarly dominant in over 100 minutes.. imagine if the PP could do anything. This team is terrifying:

I’ve long stated that I believe MacKinnon is the reason the PP is not very good, he should be less involved. But that’s an April-May problem more than it is a Game 35 issue to resolve. Colorado is the top play, and we haven’t even mentioned the $8000 defender who has literally broken the sport of ice hockey in Cale Makar. Maybe next time.

MOODS’ DUDES: Nathan MacKinnon ($10000), Gabriel Landeskog ($4500), Brock Nelson ($4500)

New Jersey (+114) @ Utah (-135) ||| o5.5 -120

Ondrej Palat is on the PP1 in 2025, soon to be 2026. Yikes. After a win in Vegas, NJ kept the same alignment in practice on Thursday. While Jack Hughes, Timo Meier (his return from personal leave is TBD), Simon Nemec, Arseny Gritsyuk, and Evgenii Dadonov are out, these players are all offensively-oriented (at least in my opinion) and aren’t overly impactful to the team defense. Only Jonathan Kovacevic, who has missed the entire year to-date, is missing who I would consider a defensive contributor. Meanwhile, Brett Pesce returned to the lineup on Wednesday and jumped in with 24 minutes TOI.

I feel rather strongly that this Devils team is pretty well-set-up to play sound, structured, defensive hockey for the next little while until their offensive talent returns. Could Hischier-Bratt go off? Sure. Could Glass-Brown-Palat take advantage of newfound minutes and PP roles to warrant stacking or mini-stacks at $8600? Absolutely. But I’m pretty much taking any projection I see and cutting it by 15-20% in my mind, as I think Keefe knows what he has available.

I’ve talked all over about Utah’s recent trend toward pacey, fun, up-tempo play of late, but I don’t really want to overrepresent that when the entire personnel of New Jersey seems set up to play games that don’t feature much scoring. I think I said I would be interested in Cody Glass once he picked up PP time, and after all the absences listed above he managed to do so. So let’s go with him and keep it moving.

MOODS’ DUDES: Cody Glass ($2900)

Welcome back, Dylan Guenther. With six goals in his last six games, Guenther is now up to 16 in 36, a 36-goal pace. He has done so with rates that are all superior to his first couple of years in the league, and is showing clear signs of chemistry with Barrett Hayton:

Siri, show me “Getting Goalied”. But with Guenther’s shot, he’ll get the last laugh more often than not when goalies are involved. Adding Crouse to this line has produced good results, but in just 44 minutes I feel this could be anyone and I’d be into Guenther.

UTA1 is $19k and I just don’t want to click those buttons. I am not a huge Keller guy and I don’t see the allure of Nick Schmaltz, 1C. JJ Peterka is fine, but I don’t expect much to be available in transition against the Devils, as covered above. He adds zero else to a lineup, and is completely non-existent on the PP1:

Sean Durzi has quietly been every bit as good as Mikhail Sergachev for $2k less, while the other four defenders show up to the rink, put on their gear, tape their sticks, and do a few hours of cardio each gameday. Daniil But is fun, and I profiled him two weeks ago in this column, but hasn’t kicked down the door to fantasy-goodness yet and seems to be settling into a third-line role.

MOODS’ DUDES: Dylan Guenther ($6600), Sean Durzi ($3900)

Dallas (-115) @ Anaheim (-105) ||| o6.5 -108

The Stars are the only team playing a B2B on Friday, fresh off a 5-3 win in the Shark Tank on Thursday. Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but they were far from impressive in this one:

Matt Duchene is taking flights to visit a concussion specialist on off days, to treat a head injury that made him perform better on concussion baseline tests.. My mom would be pleased to learn that her threat to knock us smart apparently came to pass. Maybe give him a few weeks to round back into form.

DAL2 is playing 15 minutes a night now, apparently, although Roope Hintz scored and picked up an assist while Jamie Benn scored an empty netter to mask some of the pain, as Gulutzan has stopped doing the fun thing where he double-shifts the good players constantly.

Maybe most concerningly for my bags is that Thomas Harley doesn’t look any better since returning from injury. In five games, he’s got a 45% xGF% and just 35% of the 5v5 goals. This is scarily similar to his pre-absence numbers, which were easy to write-off as injury-related (43% xG, 39% actuals).

Dallas is a slight favorite in this game, on the road on a b2b against the Pacific-leading Ducks and are comfortably in second place in the league standings. Are there any questions? Yes, Dallas will continue to score 1.60 PPGs per PP opportunity. No, do not ask how this is possible. This is one of my favorite goals of the season, from Thursday. A literal post up. What a finish.

MOODS’ DUDES: Mikko Rantanen ($7300), Wyatt Johnston ($6300)

Practice Thursday showed these lines. We’ll get back to them.

What I really want to discuss is what the fuck we are doing with Drew Helleson. This guy fucking sucks. Get him out of this lineup. Ian Moore has come in and looked like another ferocious attacker, and his tenacity is playing well defensively in sheltered minutes too.

Meanwhile, this is Drew Helleson:

He’s single-handedly sabotaging what should be a incremental step forward for Jackson LaCombe, a certified Not-A-Moods-Dude from last year. LaCombe has overcome a very slow start to finally start collecting points, and is shooting a truckload, the main point of improvement vs. last year’s fantasy profile. He’s gone from 18% lower than the average shot rate (which includes non-PP1 defenders!) to 29% above the average defender shot rate this year, so while today’s price tag for today’s matchup doesn’t make it move, he’s absolutely in the picture for me moving forward.

I’m still not convinced LaCombe is better than Zellweger (and in fact stand pretty firm in my belief that it is not the case) but we can put some lipstick on this pig so long as Helleson isn’t dragging LaCombe to the mat for no discernible reason. Olen Zellweger doesn’t share the PP ice surface with Leo Carlsson!

Whether it is Mintyukov or Moore moving up to the LaCombe pairing, I don’t really care. If Helleson is a scratch in any form, even if it is Radko Gudas making a triumphant return to the top pair, I’ll be happy. I just think Moore deserves a shot to see if he can elevate LaCombe’s all-around game, and Mintyukov-Gudas has been excellent and fun, two words that perfectly encapsulate the Ducks season so far:

Helleson sucks, and all it takes is Joel Quenneville having the courage to make the call he should have made as soon as he found out, and you know what right here is where this newsletter ends…

Oh, interesting, you didn’t recognize that rant from two weeks ago? All I did was update the pretty pictures to show even furthermore how Drew Helleson is not an NHLer. Well, guess what, you get it again. Because if practice is any indication, this mother fucker is SCRATCHING OLEN ZELLWEGER TO GET DREW HELLESON BACK INTO THE MIX.

We all knew Joel was a gutless coward, and I guess now is where that becomes undeniable. I think this guy might be fucking good:

Speaking of horrible players worthy of healthy scratching, Mikael Granlund is the John Scott of Chandler Stephensons:

Chandler Stephenson at least possesses the ability to catch a pass and deposit the puck in the open net. Granlund’s sole skill is to ruin this awesome, well-balanced, exciting hockey team. John Scott, for that matter, retired before he became as bad as Mikael Granlund:

You want to play the Anaheim Ducks? Consider instead buying a ticket to go see the circus. Maybe the tiger will jump into the crowd and maul me. Not before easily stripping the puck from Mikael Granlund and generating 47 seconds of offensive zone time, however.

MOODS’ DUDES: Cutter Gauthier ($6700), Leo Carlsson ($6500), Pavel Mintyukov ($2500)

As always, thanks for reading!

Follow me on X @FakeMoods, and to subscribe to this newsletter. I write ~once a week during the NHL DFS season, previewing DFS slates or reviewing the major contests on DraftKings. You should also subscribe to DJ Mitchell’s YouTube channel, where we stream MSP live (or post right after recording) on Monday and Wednesday nights. We plan to be live on Saturday as well to go over the massive day of games around the league. I am posting some stuff on my own personal YT channel as well, with a few pre-season Underdog drafts up at the moment and our preseason betting deep dive. And join the Discord (DM me if you want in the MSP Discord), if you somehow haven’t already. The Morning Skate Podcast is on iTunes, Sticher, Spotify, and (probably) any other podcast app of your choosing!