Friday Jan 16th NHL DFS Slate Breakdown

Happy 2026. I hope your year has started off better than mine, where I’ve had two (2) days of profit in 15 tries, and only one of them was because of NHL. Maybe I should stop tracking.

The content mill continues to churn, however, with two podcasts a week and last week’s Saturday stream. One positive? I talked myself out of entering a PGA lineup. With Corey, Keith, and Finau outside the cutline after Thursday, I can almost consider that a win today. Almost.

Praise be to Thomas Harley, he of Many Things with no Miro Heiskanen (except a PP point, but you tried your best, sweetheart). Miro returns on Sunday, so we had a fun two games to remind us that there is something there at the very least.

On to Friday, which is the day before Saturday, which is a great sports day. Sabres host the Wild at 12:30PM, Bills play in Denver at 4:30PM, and then Villanova hosts St. John’s down the road in South Philly at 8PM. Yes, please!

The main slate starts at 7PM EST with two games and wraps up with games at 8PM, 9PM, and 10:30PM. Most of these teams are playing pretty well right now, so I am expecting a relatively quiet day on Friday. Anaheim finally pulled out a W on Tuesday while L.A. continues to sputter, so the biggest action could come in the afternoon on the East Coast or even after the games have all locked besides the Freeway Faceoff.

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. I understand if you really like the stuff your Twitter homepage feeds you now, however. Normal times we are living through, at least this newsletter doesn’t get political….

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

Florida (+136) @ Carolina (-162) ||| o5.5 -135

Florida visited the White House on Thursday before their Friday game against Carolina, which you see makes sense because they play in DC on Saturday. At least the NHL gave them three whole days between games after their Monday win in Buffalo, which might as well be an entire offseason in this version of the NHL.

The visit was apparently run by Matthew Tkachuk this time, rather than Captain Sasha Barkov, even though neither has played a minute of the 2025-26 season, so I look forward to also not listening to the DJT edition of the Wingmen podcast.

Samson and the Big Man himself did wear matching maroon ties, which was a cute touch, while the rest of the Panthers squad wore matching firetruck red ties:

The President, of course, remained on his best behavior and refused to disparage any of these players’ homelands or previous Cup Champions.

Whoops, no he didn’t. Tough news for Jack Eichel, that.

On the ice, Florida does not seem ready to activate Matthew Tkachuk, so they will continue to use middle-sixers A.J. Greer and Sandis Vilmanis, indicating something of a right-wing problem in Florida.

[pause for applause]

Luostarinen-Lundell-Reinhart is falling in price and has been underperforming some pretty legitimate underlying numbers, as even Lundell and Eetu are chipping in offensively currently. This is a nice 2.0x salary line by xFPPG, something I’ve referred to many times on the podcast, and the role both offensively and defensively is unimpeachable thanks to these injuries. I don’t expect Luostarinen to keep a PP2 job, or Lundell to keep a PP1 job (which has been hit or miss over the past week or so), but for now it is surely worth pursuing.

Verhaeghe has been very poor, even with a bump to the PP1, and I am finding it hard to make excuses for him, while Sam Bennett has been good but if I’m spending $6k on a player I’m probably just making room for Reinhart on this team, at which point I am playing L1 anyway.

The bottom six is relatively useless, as Mackie and E-Rod can’t buy a goal at the moment, and I am not necessarily expecting something named Sandis Vilmanis, a 2022 5th round pick with middling AHL stats, to contribute. Carolina has three strong lines up front and do not offer any depth matchups to capitalize on.

Defensively, Uvis Balinskis seems to have stepped into the PP1 role vacated by Seth Jones after Aaron Ekblad did exactly nothing with the opportunity. Balinskis is not much of a dude, but for $2800 the role is solid enough, and last year he was closer to league-average rates-wise than he is this year. I prefer Gus Forsling for $500 more, who plays a metric ton and has far better historical rates than he’s shown this year while being stapled to Reinhart’s line. If you want to chase some game logs, in the past two games Forsling has a goal, two assists, and 3 shots on 9 attempts. For a guy with 2+15 in 45 games and less than 3 shot attempts per game on the season, this qualifies as a massive glow-up. He’s gotten some fringe PP2 time of late and it’s hard to see a forward supplanting that job, only the husk of Jeff Petry.

MOODS’ DUDES: Samson Reinhart ($7700), Anton Lundell ($4800), Gustav Forsling ($3300)

Carolina practiced today as-if they are preparing for a game without Shayne Gostisbehere, who has been in and out of the lineup. This one may be injury or it may be illness (he “didn’t feel good today”), but I think Gostisbehere will be fine. If Gostisbehere plays, the PP1 is a much better entity than if he does not, so it’s worth keeping an eye on even if he’s not in your consideration at $5500.

Alexander Nikishin practiced with the top unit on Thursday at practice, which included Jordan Staal. In case you’ve not been locked in to every single piece of league-wide usage (I swear I’ve said this 15 times now, but I need to remember some other people have lives and stuff and value their families), Jordan Staal is on the ice to win the draw and then gets the hell off the ice once the puck is cleared by the PKers. This effectively leads to Nikolaj Ehlers being perfectly PP1 correlated with Svech-Aho, unless they score immediately off the draw which I think has happened every time I’ve rostered or bet on Ehlers in this stretch.

CAR1 is a tad expensive for $19.5k, while the incredibly cheap second line seems better on paper than they do in reality, as they don’t even have the underlying expected fantasy point figures to warrant a $11.6k total price tag. CAR3 seems similar but is more expensive, and I’ve not been a Seth Jarvis guy this season. Despite a DKPt rate 53% better than the league average forward, far better than any other Cane, Seth Jarvis has cleared 21 points (3x his DK salary on Friday of $6.9k) twice in 39 games. That’s rough.

Alexander Nikishin is a borderline lock if Gostisbehere misses, as he offers the sort of three category upside that often comes in $4k+ packages if on PP1. K’Andre Miller picked up PP2 duties in practice, but if Gostisbehere plays I would be surprised if it weren’t Nikishin quarterbacking the second PP unit. They aren’t very good, anyway, so it’s not a totally relevant role or anything. It’s worth noting that in his return, Jaccob Slavin appears to be back to his normal top-four minutes, rather than the 14-15 he was limited to in his original return to play. There’s not much meat left on the bone for a guy like Nikishin, minutes-wise, so you’ll need efficiency, or the PP1 job to open up.

MOODS’ DUDES: Nikolaj Ehlers ($6100), Shayne Gostisbehere GTD ($5500), Alexander Nikishin ($3200)

San Jose (+170) @ Detroit (-205) ||| o6.5 -102

San Jose confirmed on Thursday that the second half of their back-to-back will give the team a big boost, as Will Smith returns after a month-long absence due to a shoulder injury. Missing 13 games and returning against the Seider-Edvinsson pairing isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, but Macklin Celebrini is just different. I would tread carefully (shoulder injuries are fantasy nightmares in a way that lower body injuries or concussions just aren’t), but I would like to point out that Will Smith has taken a gigantic offensive leap forward this season, becoming a top-tier fantasy prospect of the future.

Smith has elevated his shot rate from ~league average last year to 28% above league average this year, and with that his primary point rate has followed. He was on a tear next to Celebrini prior to his injury, and with San Jose moving Chernyshov off L1 on Thursday despite their win, I don’t think Smith comes in on the 3rd line.

My best guess is L2 remains the same, while Regenda-Misa-Graf take L3 with Gaudette replacing Ryan Reaves on the 4th line. Jeff Skinner remains a healthy scratch, so in theory he or Smith could replace Misa on the b2b as well, I am just not sure.

Will Smith was off the PP1 a couple games prior to his injury, so there’s no guarantee he is installed there, but it has struggled lately and he’s clearly a top four offensive forward on this team.

Pavol Regenda has been incredible in his short stint with the Sharks, so if either he or Chernyshov plays with Macklin, they are worth considering, especially if a $4.5k Will Smith also catches your eye. We do have Kucherov and MacKinnon to worry about, so SJ1 won’t be a steam candidate in my book, and Macklin has been nothing short of a fantasy superstar. I can be stubborn about him, but every day he shows up and renders an additional concern of mine null and void. Apparently now he has a 98mph one-timer, too. This kid is fucking ridiculous.

SJ isn’t seriously in my mix just because of how top heavy they are, and how dominant Seider-Edvinsson has been. However… As a good friend of the program buda often says: what should happen, don’t.

boom.

MOODS’ DUDES: Will Smith ($4500), Pavol Regenda ($4000)

DET1 now consists of James van Riemsdyk, which I just checked and yes, it is 1997, thank you for asking. JVR-Larkin-Raymond is going to give it the old college try, but none of them have been particularly good of late even if JVR is scoring. Dylan Larkin has held matchup minutes, and thus the Seider-Edvinsson pairing, for the majority of this season, but it’s long past time for DeBrincat-Copp-Kane to get their flowers and perhaps even the matchup minutes. They’ve been that good!

In 192 minutes, they are winning 5v5 minutes 18-2 and outshooting opponents 107-90. The xGs don’t match, but we’re talking about Alex DeBrincat and Patrick Kane. Take a seat, nerd. If those two dynamos are controlling the shot clock, they are going to win on talent alone. It feels like the entirety of DET has gotten cheaper, but Copp-DeBrincat were strong even without Kane over this last stretch of games, so they are being unfairly punished by the pricing algo for no apparent reason. The only downside is that Kane is PP2, while JVR has kept his PP1 job for a week or two now.

On defense, there has not been much fantasy goodness to speak of, which is a real bummer because Mo Seider looked like he was going to have a special season not that long ago. The shot volume has dried up, the blocks have largely disappeared, and to put it another way; the next even strength point he scores will be his first of 2026. We are seven Red Wings games into the new year…

MOODS’ DUDES: Alex DeBrincat ($7200), Andrew Copp ($3700), James van Riemsdyk ($3400)

Tampa (-192) @ St. Louis (+160) ||| o5.5 -125

The Tampa Bay Lightning have won eleven consecutive games. Why is no one joking about them being about to start their pre-scheduled 11-game losing streak now?

Tuesday’s 2-1 OTW broke Nikita Kucherov’s 10-game point streak, during which he had 25 points. He looks to begin anew on Friday sans Brayden Point, who was injured on Monday and is currently week-to-week, leaving one Connor Bedard-sized hole in Team Canada’s lineup as we approach the Olympics.

Kucherov has been superb over this last stretch, though he is overperforming his baseline rates. As largely a perimeter player, unlike the bull-rushing MacKinnon or the in-your-face Macklin, Kucherov could maestro his way to 4-point night easily enough, but you’re really playing a guessing game every time Kucherov hits the ice on what he will do. I am fascinated by what the field will do with Kucherov in a good matchup as it relates to MacKinnon, as I could see a world where MacKinnon goes off at 40+% owned while Kucherov sneaks in around 10-15%. In that world, I really like Kucherov. Nick Paul and Jake Guentzel feel like bad plays on this slate, but Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli will play roughly as much with Kucherov as they will with Gage Goncalves, their listed linemate, so you can make a creative stack in that way. As an added bonus, Brandon Hagel has practiced with the PP1, meaning you’re not relying on surviving a minute of Kucherov and the PP1 to get to Kucherov + Hagel + Cirelli on the PP.

Darren Raddysh is approaching must-stack territory, as he looks nearly identical to Cale Makar from a rates perspective, is playing a fuck-ton, and is $2k cheaper. This dude was legitimately healthy scratched on November 4th.

In the last 25 games, he has more DK Points than every defenseman in the league besides Zach Werenski:

There’s nothing here that is unsustainable, at least from a fantasy perspective, and we’ve learned over many years that if Kucherov trusts you, you’re going to be a fantasy monster. Go get that bag, Darren.. if not from Tampa, then from some other organization. Say, have any Tampa PP1 players moved on lately who we’ll get to later that play for teams who would kill for an offensively-juiced RHD and love handing out massive contracts to 30+ year olds?

MOODS’ DUDES: Nikita Kucherov ($9500), Brandon Hagel ($7100), Darren Raddysh ($6000)

The Blues are coming off of a 3-0 shutout of the Carolina Hurricanes, which tied Joel Hofer with the league lead with 4 shutouts on the year before Sorokin nabbed his fifth of the season on Thursday night.

Yes, a St. Louis Blues goalie was tied for the league lead in shutouts. What the hell is going on here?

The same could be said about their lineup, as especially without Robert Thomas it is… rough. Jimmy Snuggerud is taking a step forward from a rates perspective over the last stretch, and has maintained a PP1 job since his return from injury, tallying 4 or 5 shots in each of his last 4 games played. For just $3400, Snuggerud is a top value on the entire slate, but unfortunately neither of his linemates Otto Stenberg or Brayden Schenn are much of an option fantasy-wise. You can absolutely full stack them, still, despite a brutal matchup, because you need to punt somewhere to play MacKinnon or Kucherov, and using Snuggerud’s value they are a $9.8k line with 24.2 expected DKPts/game in the last ten. That’s good for 2.5x, and you really just need one goal to at least have a chance to get the optimal stack at this price if Snuggerud can hit 5 shots once more.

Neighbours-Dvorsky-Kyrou would have been moderately interesting a couple months ago, but Dvorsky simply hasn’t shown much of anything for DFS in his NHL tenure to-date. They are a cheap shit line at $11.6k, but STL2 just seems better with the same attribute of having 2 PP1 forwards.

On defense, Philip Broberg appears likely to miss, but he skated on Thursday (without a D-partner), so keep an eye out. This would be a significant upgrade to the STL blueline if he is available, and would dampen my TB interest as well. Broberg was supposed to be PP1 at the time of his injury, but at $3500 there are other D slightly less and more expensive than him that I prefer. No other D has been remotely usable in my book, especially at Friday’s prices in this matchup.

MOODS’ DUDES: Jimmy Snuggerud ($3400)

Nashville (+250) @ Colorado (-310) ||| o6.5 -102

I’m starting to fall in love with this Nashville team, the way I did down the stretch post-U2 a couple years ago. They seem to be… back. They play a fun tempo, they have reliable fantasy pieces, and their DFS prices never seem to move. Meanwhile, Colorado is incredibly injured, also play at a high pace, and have had defensive results that are sliding as of late and now sit right around league average:

Nashville took a shootout decision in December at home against the Avs, then played them tight in a 4-2 loss a few days later. An Avs team without Devon Toews, Gabriel Landeskog, and Ross Colton is at least more susceptible than the superteam Colorado has iced for most of the season, and their lack of depth is showing, with an entire fourth line of strictly AHL talent. Nashville feels like a live dog here.

I am not convinced that Evangelista-ROR-Forsberg is the ideal set-up, but Forsberg has been terrible lately and not all of it is sheer bad luck. He’s deferring more than ever, and guys like Stamkos and Evangelista are taking advantage of it. My ideal route here is a mini-stack with ROR and Evangelista, or Stamkos and Josi, or a full NSH2 stack of Stamkos-Haula-Bunting.

Roman Josi seems like he’s rounding into form just in time for the Olympics, where the Swiss defender looks to lead his squad into battle. What better tune up for the Olympics than MacKinnon and Makar?

MOODS’ DUDES: Roman Josi ($6500), Steven Stamkos ($5300), Luke Evangelista ($4400)

Colorado practiced on Thursday with COL1 remaining the same, Gavin Brindley on L2, and Sam Malinski paired with Cale Makar. With no Ross Colton or Landeskog, it seems likely that Malinski will get his first extended run with the PP2 of the season, and he’s been incredibly productive without PP time to-date so far this season. With his minutes likely to rise to 20-21, if not higher, thanks to the pairings, Malinski is an intriguing option despite being priced up to $3900.

Nelson-Nichushkin have lost some of the xFP luster they had a week ago, but Nelson has been wildly productive to the tune of what is now a season-high $6700 price tag. COL1, however, is $23k, so COL2 is priced like a dream relatively speaking. COL1 should be the highest owned line by a decent margin on Friday, and with the way NSH is playing I have trouble getting there.

If you need a push to play MacKinnon (read: if you’re an idiot like me, a complete dumbass, an absolute buffoon), keep in mind that for the majority of this season MacKinnon has been a part of a full NHL lineup that has dominated top-to-bottom, this has largely protected his minutes from getting too high. Now, however, thanks to injury, the entire 4th line is JAGs (just a guy), at least two of which who seemingly played in the AHL on Weds night. They’ll get their five minutes and be done with it, leaving MacKinnon to pick up more slack TOI wise than they have requested of him in recent months.

You can set your clock to MacKinnon, and that’s a very useful quality when you’re playing games for money. His linemates are a bit more hit-or-miss, and I think the matchup might get overplayed as a positive thing in COL’s favor. The story of my season so far: Fade the Mack(s) at your own risk.

MOODS’ DUDES: Nathan MacKinnon ($10500), Sam Malinski ($3900)

Anaheim (+136) @ Los Angeles (-162) ||| o6.5 +110

One of the more annoying narratives of the last couple weeks have been about Anaheim’s slide of late being because of team defense. They’ve been roughly the same team they’ve been all year, but cannot buy a fucking save. Scroll up to the xGA chart to see Anaheim’s output, but there’s nothing concerning going on under the surface, even before Tuesday’s win against the Stars.

Furthermore, Anaheim continues to play with pace, though not quite as much as they had between Thanksgiving and Christmas:

I don’t really know how to explain 3 wins in 16 tries, then. It just is the way it is, I guess. Try scoring a goal.

The Anaheim lineup for their Tuesday win was.. something, too. No Leo, no Cutter, no Terry, no problem. Terry and Cutter look to return to Friday’s lineup, while Leo remains out. Somehow, that might be ideal, Carlsson has been atrocious as-of late and I am hopeful that this brief respite can help him heal up from whatever is bothering him.

Friday’s practice left the original top six intact, with Terry and Gauthier flanking 3C Ryan Poehling. Interesting. Even more interesting is the PP units, gleaned from this tweet.

We’re back to something of a kids & vets split, with Mikael Granlund being the only veteran on the PP1 the way I interpret things. Sans Leo, I think Cutter does a ton of puck-handling here, and with his propensity to shoot, I think we have a strong Cutter floor of shot attempts even in a limiting matchup with a sound, slow, Kings team. Mason McTavish has been pretty good, lately, and is a player I am very high long-term on. Pavel Mintyukov is not Olen Zellweger, but it’s also not guaranteed it is Minty on that unit (we only saw the full PP2 of Kreider-Strome-Killorn-Terry-LaCombe meeting in the video). Mintyukov nearly eclipsed Jackson LaCombe’s TOI on Tuesday, an interesting wrinkle considering LaCombe’s best fantasy week of the season came in a week where he played <20 minutes on average. We could be seeing Mintyukov elevate to a true 21 minute, top PP role before our very eyes.

Building around Cutter seems prudent in any situation, and would be my preferred approach in an ANA build, but I am not super high on this game pending news collection.

MOODS’ DUDES: Cutter Gauthier ($6600), Mason McTavish ($5200), Pavel Mintyukov ($3300)

The Kings are such a mess offensively right now that I don’t want to speculate too much, I think it is legitimately possible that we get any number of Anze Kopitar, Trevor Moore, Corey Perry, or Joel Armia on Friday… or nothing at all.

If we get no new faces in Friday’s lineup, Alex Laferriere and Adrian Kempe have been carrying the load offensively together on a line with… Jeff Malott.. while Kevin Fiala and Brandt Clarke have been dancing to their own beat, having all the fun together at 5v5. I am not super upset by this, do not tell the media I am super upset by this. Quinton Byfield has been simultaneously better and even more frustrating than normal, because now we know he is capable of shooting and succeeding when he shoots. Will that prevent him from going on an extending shooting drought where he just simply stops taking his own shot? Of course it won’t.

I’ve been banging the Fire Jim Hiller drum for over a year now, and with the Kings sitting outside of a playoff spot we may finally get our wish if they blow this b2b against a Ducks team that is on a skid. Maybe the next coach will realize Brandt Clarke is 2x the defenseman that Drew Doughty is. I often have to tell DJ “are you betting on this because you think it’ll happen, or because you want it to happen”, and I feel the same way about Brandt Clarke now. However, Clarke has legitimately been great over the past few weeks, in a way that you could squint and see early in the year but is just full on in-your-face right now. A $5000 price tag feels about right, thanks to his role being somehow limited by the dumbest coach in the league, but there seems like more upside than downside here, considering the role issues, positive matchup, and sublime underlying skill profile.

My favorite Jim Hiller Kings-era stat will forever be this, at least until they slay the EDM dragon:

With Adrian Kempe and Brandt Clarke, and with Jim Hiller as coach, the Kings score 4.12 goals/60 in over 500 minutes at 5v5:

Over the last five years, Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid have scored 4.23 goals/60 when paired together at 5v5.

Adrian Kempe has played only 24% of his 5v5 minutes with Brandt Clarke, and in that other 76% has registered almost exactly league-average 2.6 goals/60.

Jim Hiller is a war criminal. Change my mind.

The matchup is pristine, the results are there in a gigantic sample, and all we need Kempe to play a somewhat regular shift away from Drew Doughty and Cody Ceci.

Good luck, I’ll see you all at the bottom.

MOODS’ DUDES: Adrian Kempe ($6200), Brandt Clarke ($5000), Alex Laferriere ($4700)

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!