November Barn Bash Contest Review

With the NBA off for civic causes surrounding the US election, NHL took center stage, and the sites did not disappoint, offering a smattering of juiced prize pools for the evening.

Nothing else relevant transpired, either, so the world’s attention was on the NHL, which must be why the nation is abuzz with chatter about the Predators who are headed to the Capitals in the near future (h/t to DJ for the bit, though as a noted Coward he didn’t tweet it out):

I broke down the slate with DJ Mitchell on the Morning Skate Podcast, which you should subscribe to here (YT with some screen share visuals) and here (in podcast form) so that you have access to it every Tuesday and Thursday (and some other days when the schedule and contests warrant it!). If you missed it, it’s worth a re-watch in the aftermath.

In case you missed it, I broke down last month’s Spin-O-Rama contest ($360 buy-in, $100K to first) here: https://moods.beehiiv.com/p/2024-oct-spin-o-rama. Last year’s contest reviews are also on the newsletter, and are threaded for your convenience here: https://x.com/FakeMoods/status/1853496293907161165

Heading into the 11-game slate, this is a super quick summary of where I was, and then what changed throughout the AM skate routine:

• Colorado welcomed back Artturi Lehkonen, who had a DK price tag of just $3500. Despite the prices on MacKinnon, Makar, and Rantanen being tops on the slate, Lehkonen’s cost was likely $2k lower than where it will be in two weeks’ time, creating some value on Colorado. Between that and a home date with Seattle, they were comfortably going to be the most owned plays on the night.

• I felt pretty good about Calgary and Jeremy Swayman being very popular based on Vegas odds/totals, as CGY was favored on the road in Montreal despite being Calgary. While we didn’t know lines for certain, the only saving grace was that CGY was likely to have two or even three lines with PP players on it, so ownership could spread out more than on other teams. Boston was in Toronto, though Swayman was already a good bit more likely to win than the goalies cheaper than him.

• Vancouver, in Anaheim, I thought could come in higher than where Occupy had them (about 10%), based on the industry buzz and how Miller/Boeser/Hughes fit with virtually any construction you wanted to try, so long as Lehkonen and/or Mayfield was involved.

• Lastly for the high-level Monday Night takeaways I had: SJ was preferable to CBJ with the return of Celebrini, NYI was a bit of a gong show (I did not see the ownership flooding in until Tuesday AM, see below), and I liked PIT1 as a top stack on the night to take advantage, No Brayden Point would mean Mitchell Chaffee at $2500 would be PP1.

Come Tuesday AM, we find out:

• Matthews would miss for Toronto, moving Rielly to PP1, Max Domi to L1, and solidifying both the MacKinnon chalk and Swayman chalk.

• The Islanders would be without all three of Adam Pelech, Alexander Romanov, and Mike Reilly, leaving them incredibly short-handed on D with Mayfield at $2500 and Dobson PP1 + 28 minutes coming into focus. In spite of this, it was clear that the NYI forward group projected preposterously well, and would carry hefty ownership.

• Point was out, the setup we described Monday on the pod came to fruition.

• Jake Walman would be a healthy scratch in San Jose, ensuring that the San Jose blueline would be dominated by someone cheap.

• Some other minor things that I called out in the Discord, but I don’t think played a role here in how I, or the field, played.

What I Played

After much consternation of what to fit around PIT1, I rolled out the following:

• As I alluded to, PIT1 was almost a certainty in my lineup on Tuesday. I just love the prospects of Sid and Geno playing together with a cheap Rakell, and ownership never materialized against an Isles team without Barzal and the three D mentioned above. I didn’t need the confirmation bias, but it’s worth registering that PIT1 + EK65 projected better than WPG1 + Morrissey (subbing Ehlers for Vilardi, technically, based on how I gather “top 4” players per team), straight up on PuckLuck and in Occupy Fantasy’s OF Index. The PIT side was $500 less (shown in the rainbow screenshot has Bunting over Malkin hence the huge price disparity, but I checked and accounted for that on my end in analyzing things), and at a significant ownership discount to boot. PIT1 was a top two stack of the night in my book, and they weren’t number two.

• From there, I was playing around with combinations of defenders (I was never going to play a NYI forward into colossal ownership. Too many other spots and stacks I liked) to fill out a game-stack, and to that end settled on Erik Karlsson. I felt Dobson was in a great position to put up a good score, but EK65’s price tag, $900 less, plus the direct correlation with Dobson scoring (PP/PK time for Dobson, plus a bit of a “jolt” to the game environment), made the decision for me. Pulock and Mayfield were fine enough ways to punt defense, but was not very fun in my eyes.

• My other D spot was also accounted for, as I was very confident in Mario Ferraro with no Walman. For just $3900, a player who I thought could play 27 minutes alongside Cody Ceci with the sort of Actually Good shot+block generation in his recent history in a great environment was a priority. I lightly considered the savings on Zellweger, but knew that the majority of the time Ferraro would outscore him, even if Zellweger was more likely to get PP points (Ferraro was losing PP time to both Thompson and Liljegren, based on skate), with his profile.

• Artturi Lehkonen was so cheap that I didn’t think you had to play any other COL pieces with him. He helped fit those studs in, absolutely, but even a 13 from Lehkonen (1G, 3SOG) plays at $3500 and doesn’t guarantee any other COL player matches their salary-adjusted value, so he went in to lower the cost burden on my remaining two spots, which I had ~9k left to toy with, not including goalie.

• I liked Celebrini and Toffoli, which fits perfectly in for Dach and Marchand, as they were joining forces with Mikael Granlund, who has been everywhere for this San Jose squad. However, because Granlund was with this line, I anticipated this line getting the CBJ1 matchup all night. Unfortunately for them, CBJ1 has been unbelievable so far this season, something best summarized in the Wookiee Sheet:

  

  0.95 xGA/60! Holy schnikies!

• That also left me with only enough money for Swayman, and I’d rather find a way to get in Marchand with Swayman to support Swayman at his ownership, which was not difficult at all. Once I found the 2v2 or 3v3 that included Kirby Dach, I realized that I had two one-offs in matchups I really liked, as MTL1 is good and CGY is not (…nope, not giving in yet), and BOS1 against TOR without Matthews felt like another trip down the TOR house of horrors. As I read off on the pod and showed on the sheet, Marchand’s past ten game xFP production trailed only Kaprizov, Pasta, Svech, KC81, Rantanen, Makar, Guentzel, and Kucherov. Marchand was $2000 cheaper than the least expensive of those guys (Svech). In both cases, the one-offs were slightly uncomfortable, but they were much cheaper than players they theoretically could outscore or score equal to in that stack, and with a huge bet placed on PIT1 at a higher salary, I could survive if both players hit in a big way and carried their more expensive linemates with them (or vice versa, of course) with how low owned I figured each stack would be. The combinations just were not likely to bury me, unlike if, say, MTL1 were 20% owned and Caufield scoring 30 would have made him a near-must.

Results:

I whiffed on the $555, missing min cash by ~25 points, and obviously didn’t cash anything else either with my one team on DK. One rather annoying factor is that I had Celebrini+Toffoli+Dobson+Vanecek in from my morning build, which fit perfectly over Dach+Marchand+EK65+Swayman.. IF I drop from Lehkonen to a $2500 play like Chaffee or Wahlstrom or Mayfield.

I of course felt this was pretty poor process, but that Vanecek was the random donkey goalie who saved a lot of players’ bacon on Tuesday night (including one big one in particular!) with a 45-point performance makes it sting a little bit. I briefly considered Celebrini-Vanecek over Dach-Swayman, too, but opted not to play into what I perceived as a bad matchup and heavy ownership on Macklin.

Real decisions I made, yes, but ones that weren’t all that close in my mind.

I made a very small amount of $ on the night (I also whiffed on my bets, DK is fun!) thanks to an UD squad that ran into the nuts, so don’t feel too sorry for me:

What Won:

It was a really tight top of the leaderboard on Tuesday night, with Vanecek’s heroics (plus an OT assist…) pulling out the victory for hixx. While it feels cheap, hixx had a pretty good process to run into that lucky result: although no Sabres are in that lineup, you can see from the rest of the top three that BUF1 was a slate-winner last night, and of the 33 lineups with Tage-JJP-Dahlin, hixx had ELEVEN of them across his 36 squads. As such, hixx had a pretty good night, not only riding that Vanecek + NYI + COL to first place, but also the BUF stuff to 5th and 7th plus several more in the top 50 of the contest.

The fact that MacKinnon had 5 assists and yet Rantanen/Lehkonen and even Makar (who left early to injury) didn’t put the slate entirely out of reach is quite surprising, but goes to show the variance of hockey and the power of these super-elite players.. they can get there entirely on their own, usually through points plus shot bonuses, but other times simply through playing way more than any of their teammates or taking longer shifts. The volatility ramps up with the talent, as far as stacking is concerned.

Shoutout to the 6-1-1 BUF stack from jpeters, getting passed by the late DeBrusk goal and Vanecek’s aforementioned heroics has to sting. I like the idea of overstacking on larger slates when the field is not really doing so (only focusing on those overstacks on smaller slates), and BUF1 + PP1 + Byram cheap D certainly fits the bill of “if this team scores 5, can I get enough of that production to win?” Tuch and Cozens were disappointing for their prices, and jpeters didn’t even get a W in net, yet access to JJP and Tage plus some production around it made the BUF stack work. That team won the $25 FHWC qualifier, valued at $20k, so jpeters got some good out of it on top of the $40k from the third place $555 finish.

Field Analysis:

• I was surprised to see Celebrini steam all the way up to Lehkonen-esque ownership. Having Liljegren as a punt and Toffoli projecting well in the mid-tier helped, but I am confident that I made the right call in avoiding the spot in my lineup, results aside.

• San Jose and Celebrini are an interesting case - Celebrini’s price will be worth monitoring going forward, as I think he might be a good bit over projected (remember, we have now 2 games of NHL work to use on him) given his NCAA output from last year. Quite good, of course, but I don’t think there is any argument in favor of nearly 30% ownership on an 11-game slate as a rookie, home vs. CBJ be damned.

• I got VAN wrong, in thinking that they might separate from the pack as a chalk option. They were certainly owned, and I couldn’t fit it with PIT1 without punting D (and I would have wanted a NYI-PIT D and QHughes), but I whiffed on it as VAN2 did not separate and came in lower than SJ despite similar price to SJ1, even when knocking it a bit for DeBrusk not being PP1. They didn’t win the slate, but surely did enough to be competitive with the proper pieces surrounding it at a non-offensive cost.

• The field was spot on with Swayman, Dobson, Pulock, and Mayfield ownership, IMO. In the past, we’ve seen “man-down” situations go underowned, and so maybe this is just a factor of who the players are (popular-ish punts to begin with, plus Dobson to attach to chalk PP1 NYI players, with Swayman being a regularly-popular goalie given his pedigree and team history), but I would guess the respective 10-15% ownership on all four players was efficient, and didn’t clump together on one or two of the “obvious values”, when accounting for NYI D injuries and no AM34 on Tuesday. I’ll try to check in on this aspect of The Field when the next big contest comes around, if there are any similar situations.

I was happy with how I played on DK, and getting a bit of extra volume down on UD given the larger offerings there wound up saving my night. Any time you can escape a losing slate with a win, you have to take it.

Hopefully you had a successful Tuesday, and if not we can reconvene on Wednesday evening and try to nail the Thursday slate, so don’t miss The Morning Skate Podcast!

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