Lightning Struck

I played two teams in the $222 Lightning Line on DraftKings with ~1.5k total entries and $100k to 1st place. On Tuesday, the eight-game slate garnered a lot of interest on the website, with the $222 filling at least an hour prior to lock and the $20 contest having been full when I checked around 4:30PM EST.

The people are frothy for good NHL contests! Hopefully the great news out of Ontario last week can only improve the NHL lobby if the DFS sites allow Ontario back in after the court ruling.

As a reminder, this is just a part of a series of these types of reviews: Several contest reviews are also on the newsletter, like last month’s massive season-opener: https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/nhl-dfs-tilt-n-hurl-october-2025

two years ago threaded for your convenience here: https://x.com/FakeMoods/status/1853496293907161165

In 2024-25, I reviewed:

March $200K to first (!!): https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/a-barn-bash-at-the-donkey-palace

January’s $360 contest, in which Mike got hawked down late for the $100k top prize (but don’t worry, he still shipped a FHWC seat with that lineup): https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/2025-jan-360-spin-o-rama

MN Matt’s December $200k takedown in the $888: https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/2024-dec-888-abomnable-snowman

November’s $555 contest: https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/november-2024-barn-bash

October’s $360 contest: https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/2024-oct-spin-o-rama

The rainbow chart for this slate was.. interesting. You can read more about the rainbow chart here.

We had an absolute gong show of a time on the Morning Skate Podcast trying to cover all of the injuries and uncertainty on Tuesday. While we did a pretty good job, even more stuff transpired on Tuesday that we weren’t expecting. I think it’s quite useful for anyone who wants to really get into the nitty gritty of these slate recaps to have actually listened to the show, but also if you’re the sort of sick freak who wants to read these, I promise you the Morning Skate Podcast is for you. That said, here are the most prominent items that made Tuesday unique, in my mind, in no particular order.

• Utah was heading into San Jose on a back-to-back. A month ago, this would have been the first, second, and third place to look. San Jose was The Team to stack against, but the b2b on top of the relatively difficult fantasy environment from Utah so far this year as a lower-scoring team comfortable grinding games out, mixed with a concerted effort from SJ to kill their pace, all led to Utah with merely a middling team total.

• The two teams with a higher total than Utah, Dallas and Winnipeg, each were very priced up relative to all other options.

• New Jersey and Tampa was set to be a total mismatch of a matchup of titans (minus Jack Hughes, basically)… or a battle of AHL bottom sixes. There were at least FIVE regulars set to return versus the prior time each team stepped on the ice, but specifics were non-existent outside of the prospective NJ 5v5 lines.

• Toronto without Matthews had been spiraling in spite of Tavares and Nylander producing offensively, and we were not 100% sure they would look like in a winnable matchup with the Blues.

• DET1 was very expensive despite the team total, considering their three best fantasy players, by a mile, were on the same line. VGK possessed a difficult matchup but a higher total. Both teams had a key value on the PP1 (Axel Sandin-Pellikka for Detroit, Braeden Bowman for Vegas) that made stacking them easier than other teams.

• Oh, and Chicago played the Flames. At home. And the Flames were favored. hm.

What I Played

Not enough Bedard.

I wasn’t chasing any satellites for this contest, so I had two entries on Tuesday night. Ho Hum. They aren’t super interesting, and neither cashed. I also played the two late slates, and oddly the 8PM slate was not a turbo slate (with three games) but rather a 5-game late slate, before the 2-game later slate. Weird.

• I went into the 6:30 window of news prepared to play DET1 + CHI. ASP made DET1 so affordable, and I was very surprised to see other players (Dmitry Orlov comes to mind, but not to single him out or anything) project better than ASP who I thought belonged nowhere in the conversation when considering GPP upside.

• Then at 6:30, we got a few bombshells. Matthew Knies was OUT for Toronto due to injury, leaving Toronto even more banged up than they already were; with Matthews, Knies, Nic Roy, Laughton, Carlo, Tanev, and Stolarz injured, Toronto had already been slipping into some real bad territory both in the standings and with their play.

• New Jersey came out for warmups, and Dougie, Connor Brown, Brendan Dillon, and Evgenii Dadonov were all set to go. However, even though Tampa was getting Anthony Cirelli back, both Victor Hedman and Erik Cernak were ruled out, both of which were surprises to me. Additionally, we were not anticipating Hagel-Cirelli-Kucherov, so that was another hurdle to navigate.

• I was still anticipating Utah to offer up a surprise in the late window, while CBJ seemed safe among teams on a B2B.

  

  Two main slate teams, a 5-game late slate, and a 2-game later slate

I went in main with a DET1 + ASP stack, as I was the most confident in them, and had no real hesitation based on the ownership I was seeing elsewhere. ASP was cheap enough to allow me to play a good team around it, unlike WPG or DAL full stacks. I had my doubts about Utah, but ownership felt way too low in a spot where the total was still a 6.5 and both sides looked fine in the rainbow chart. Guenther plus Hayton, a one-off Holloway, Borgen (I had Morrow in, wanting a punt defenseman in the 10PM window in case Hayton-Guenther were split up, so I could manuever around more easily), and Jacob Markstrom. The returning players, plus Hedman out, had Markstrom too cheap by at least a few hundred dollars, even though the books did not seem to react to this news at all (they knew!).

With that lineup in, Brandon Hagel was the Lightning piece with an extreme benefit as a result of the Kucherov line change. This gave me some natural leverage against my Markstrom position, if he failed, with only two teams. I also thought there was a very real chance Hagel moved to the PP1, and he’s been insanely productive without the role. Bjorkstrand rotated in practice yesterday, and even though he dressed for this one, he clearly seemed replaceable.

The STL1 situation was super compelling to me, and of course I needed to get in Bedard + Soderblom. I didn’t feel like I had to jam any pieces on Chicago, but in looking through my $5K options, it was kinda Burakovsky/Raddysh vs. Nazar/D’Astous. Charle-Edouard D’Astous is a bona-fide Moods Dude with a great overseas profile and looking the part of a smooth NHL defenseman in Tampa so far. Add in the third pair being Steven Santini and Declan Carlile and I easily saw 20+ minutes with PP and PK time on top of decent rates (but nothing special… yet!). Saving $1k off the donkey chucker Raddysh, who was a healthy scratch as recently as last week, seemed like a no-brainer if it allowed me to do something I liked.

Nazar was the other Hawk who benefited greatly from an 11F 7D set-up, and the PP1 would work through him and Bedard with no Bertuzzi to clean up the trash. He missed a couple games, but over the last ten he had 1 goal in 8 games despite nearly 4 expected goals, and stacking him with Bedard and Soderblom gave me the exact game script I was looking for, since he serves as a defensive ace with no Dickinson late in games.

Results:

I got my clock cleaned to the tune of $240 back on $1218 across the three slates, more than half of which was on main that airballed. Bah humbug.

These two lineups I am relatively happy with, as much as I want to blame myself for St. Louis tanking my Bedard team.. Thomas had an assist, Snuggerud bonused, Faulk bonused, and Holloway.. well, he hit his shot prop (I did not bet it). They really weren’t the reason this team lost, as TB scored 5 and Hagel did nothing in 21 minutes. The team was dead even before the uber-popular Macklin Celebrini tallied a hat trick. It happens.

The Detroit team I had originally also had Bedard on it, which certainly would have gotten me some money back (though the punts it had with it I don’t recall being particularly good, though I don’t remember that team really as I write this other than DET1 + ASP + Bedard). Maybe I should have held more conviction on Bedard, but I got him on the late night build, and with just how weird NJ@TB was with late news, I like making that a priority since it’ll naturally play out over time that the late changes will benefit me. This time… it did not, as even though Guentzel was not super popular, he was owned enough to win tournaments, despite not slotting in with Kucherov at 5v5. Tampa is always going to double-shift Kucherov, however, so Guentzel wasn’t an openly bad play or anything. It’s just annoying. Why couldn’t it have been Hagel if TB had to ruin Markstrom???

The Markstrom team, of course, was fighting uphill immediately. DET was fine but not great, even with the full-line empty netter, and the UTA mini didn’t capture a hat trick to make the min cash line.

On that thought…

What a weird night!

No team had more than 3.5 xGs on the night, per HockeyViz, and only two cleared 3.0. Tampa… and St. Louis? Crap, did I actually play great? I’m gonna meet in the middle and say I played fine:

What Won:

I don’t know what the hell this third-place team is. I’m going to ignore it. Bedard and Guentzel was good for lots of money, in case you couldn't tell. Two late goals from Peterka pushed Kencamnat up the leaderboard, and I know I see this name a lot.

The first and second place teams are really neat, however. I am guessing they are either opto-built or the fine folks just missed the TB lines, however (as the $1k savings on Hagel was probably worth it for both lineups, considering the one-offs). Again, annoying, but not impossible to see Kucherov win with anyone. Playing Darren Raddysh <10% was quite sharp, as a reaction to the Hedman news. His three point night made him the only “had to have it” piece on this slate that didn’t have a hat trick, while correlating with a hat trick. The fact that all three top finishers have Raddysh is no surprise. Darren Raddysh isn’t good, so I am not regretting my D’Astous play (I saved $2K with D’Astous-Hagel, and have no real reason to think that’s any worse a play), but this sort of thing happens and is why we correlate!

It’s pretty disgusting that the contest called “Lightning Line” is won by.. Tampa stacks. I should just consider myself thankful that the contest wasn’t called “Flames Onslaught” or I never would have stood a chance.

Despite the hat tricks, the four-stacks on each of the top two teams were rather disappointing, with the CHI stack of Bura-Greene-Levshunov totaling 15.6 DKPts and SJ’s Smith-Wennberg-Orlov accruing 15.8 on the night. But they were cheap and allowed Kucherov-Guentzel to fit, and both players hit the Vasilevskiy money printing press.

As covered, opting for these one-off pieces instead of finding additional money via Hagel vs. Guentzel is odd, but the Dvorsky play outscored Robertson by enough to be the difference, since the surrounding CHI/SJ stacks didn’t separate things.

Hat tricks.. they are important. Congratulations to OneDropKing on the $100k prize, and to Fantassin on the impressive showing, finishing 2nd, 4th, and 5th for $45k total (plus other cashes further down, starting at 25th place).

Field Analysis:

It should come as no surprise that the chalk smashed in a big way on Tuesday. Of the 23 players with 10%+ ownership, all but five failed to clear 10 DKPts. For some, like John Tavares, this wasn’t enough to be competitive, but this also includes two of the hat tricks. Guentzel was down at 2.7% owned, and Kucherov at 6.3%.

I still sort of can’t believe that Macklin was quite owned, at 15% (and 25% in the $121 SE!), but I think the main problem was the insane projections on both his teammates and his goalie. Orlov outprojected ASP and the entire crop of punt D. We’ve yet to see him run the PP1 in San Jose in a way that generates fantasy points. Alexander Wennberg and Philipp Kurashev also came in in the 6% range, around Dvorsky, Cowan, and Gritsyuk, and both are allergic to shooting. Will Smith was fine, but for a combined $12k, there were lots of options that saved money that I preferred and avoided the duplication that SJ presented. Even Askarov was 23% owned which surprised me (though the odds held steady as only very slight underdogs, making it purely a price play moreso than correlation.. I hope…)

Most SJ teams looked to be punting multiple spots to fit in a Dallas or Winnipeg stack, both of which were led by the studs performing (Jason Robertson taillied 27.5, Kyle Connor 18), but not enough to challenge the hat tricks of the slate.

Combing through the <5% stuff, the only spot I feel bad about not playing at this low of ownership (DET was 10-15%, STL1 was 6-8%) is NYI1. With Dallas missing both Thomas Harley and Ilya Lyubushkin on top of Nils Lundkvist’s long-term injury, their second D-pair was legitimately Lian Bichsel and Alexander Petrovic. NYI has been relatively consistent about using Schaefer with Barzal, and the set-up was such that DAL seemed likely to deploy Miro-Lindell against Schaefer when at all possible (he’s that good).

This left NYI1 to play against DAL crap with no ownership and rather low prices. Heineman especially was just $3.3k and was one of my favorite values of the night. To not get there myself is mildly annoying (the Blues! see, I told myself I wouldn’t be angry with myself, but I can’t help it), as Heineman scored 13.4, Horvat 12.8, and Palmieri 20, winning their minutes slightly while Barzal was mired in a 10% xGF% in this one. 46 points for $15.5k was almost enough to pair with TB Kucherov-Guentzel-Raddysh and win, as old friend Nawada combined in his 11th place finisher (and a better showing from Igor or Schaefer would have been worth a pretty penny, too). You finagle it a bit to get to Bedard over Horvat (an $800 difference), and there’s a realistic path to slate domination.

Unfortunately, ResultsDB is not updated (and hasn’t been updated since last Tuesday for DK contests), so the specifics of stacking (WPG and replacing Vilardi with Perfetti, for example) aren’t really in my wheelhouse for now, but these are the sort of things we talked about on the Morning Skate Podcast and at least anecdotally did see some folks do. There are many ways to win, and Tuesday offered up a slate that essentially held three paths to victory. If you picked only two of them, you were sitting pretty.

I had a rough night, but we’ll keep at it as we head into the holiday season. I’ll see what contests look like before committing to a Friday slate preview on the newsletter, and reminder that with American Thanksgiving next week, so the MSP schedule will likely be Monday-Wednesday-Friday (with Friday coming in the form of an early-afternoon livestream, if possible. Last year, I blew a tire on the way to Thanksgiving and had to spend Black Friday getting it replaced, so fingers crossed for better luck).

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this recap, be sure to subscribe to the Newsletter and to The Morning Skate Podcast, a podcast covering every Tuesday and Thursday NHL DFS slate throughout the season.

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