Cicima Barn Bashes Our Brains In

We are back! Each month (or so), DraftKings posts an NHL GPP that is far larger than the days around it, typically on Tuesdays in concert with the largest slates of games. Each month, I faithfully review my play in the contest and discuss takeaways and strategy for these contests, and for the game in general.

For previous versions of this review, see my posts from yesterday (the Monday slate), January (which was also the night I won my FHWC seat!) December, November, and October and subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss out on future posts!

As part of all of these “flagship” slates, I have a podcast that I would suggest you subscribe to if you had the curiosity to click on this link, as it will be right up your alley. If you haven’t listened to Tuesday’s pod and are reading this, I’m likely going to make casual references to the thoughts I shared within the podcast, so it may even be worth your time to listen to this one after it’s no longer relevant to the slate, if only to connect what I’m saying there with how I’m explaining my decisions closer to DFS lock. I spend about an hour with regular co-host DJ Mitchell going game-by-game through the slate, talking about all the little bits and pieces of news we have the day before a game, and mentioning what to keep an eye on the following day. In addition to news, we’ll of course cover where I’m looking to stack teams, where to find values, etc. as a full strategy show.

I played six lineups on Tuesday, entering all six in the $20, the $40, and the $25 FHWC Qualifier. I entered one of those six in the $555, as well.

Today’s Primary Point: Breaking Down My Approach to the Slate

A few slate characteristics worth considering, though the full context from the Tuesday pod is of course considered:

• Heiskanen was present for AM skate in Manhattan, meaning he would play for Dallas in a shorthanded defensive corps.

• FLA and LA were the two highest team totals of the night, and it wasn’t all that close. With pricing across all ranges, it was fair to expect the teams to be popular, but to not necessarily funnel around one or two players/lines in those games, an 8-game slate supporting several double digit lines, potentially.

• Conversely, Colorado didn’t profile great, but MacKinnon did, making him likely to be higher-owned as a one-off than in a stack.

• Shea Theodore was confirmed to play, which anyone paying attention to my content in particular would know was a huge deal to me, as I think he’s great.

• Generally speaking, it was a pretty vanilla slate, especially relative to the gong show that was Monday (results/hat tricks aside).

My strategy mostly formed by 6PM EST, and I wanted to focus on the upper tier of the xG chart - I didn’t see a ton in the red xG Index teams that I was all that interested in; generally the team totals agreed.

The one extremely minor note that I made to myself was to check NJ D-pairs - with no John Marino I was a bit worried about Luke Hughes’ role, as Jonas Siegenthaler is generally a minutes eater and I expected him to play the left side, along with Hughes. Ultimately, the pairings were Siegenthaler - Nemec || LHughes - Smith || Bahl - Miller.

moods — Yesterday at 6:38 PM

yikes no marino and NJ all of a sudden looks gnarly on D huh

I noted this in the Discord, and personally moved WSH1 into my stack list. In six teams, I had at least one stack of PIT2, DAL1, DAL3, VAN2, FLA2, VGK1, NSH1, WSH1.

The only money I clawed back was thanks to this “late” realization - it probably shouldn’t have been a last minute observation, but it’s worth noting that the Caps had a reasonable xG mark and that Ovi was obnoxiously cheap.

Defensively, I made a concerted effort to build around Miro (and Harley!) and Shea, given I felt the DAL prices were too low and that VGK/NSH was an incredible game stack opportunity.

A quick summary of my lineups from above:

1. DAL3 + VAN2, leaving Benn off for a DAL Double D stack that I’ll continue to play until they’re priced for their upside. This left room for Jack Hughes one off and MAF in goal, who was my personal favorite goalie (RIP). I entered this one in the $555, regrettably.

2. VAN2 + VGK1, Boldy + Byram one offs (with Shea in for Steph). Boldy a bet on a more muted MIN1 performance, but still one that led to Boldy continuing his unbelievably strong shot rates. This left just enough room for Elvis in goal, who fared slightly better than MAF at least.

3. DAL1 + DAL DD + Ovi/Strome, Glass one off. A full on mid-tier stack-a-palooza, Ovechkin the most expensive player at just $6.3k. I really liked this team, and had I had a second $555 I think I would have fired this one (the only consideration would be overleveraging myself on Harley-Heiskanen). DAL1 simply didn’t get there, but they had their chances, putting up 40 shots on Igor and the Rangers in a b2b spot.

4. NSH1 + PIT2, double spend up at D in Josi/Shea to finish the game stack. I liked Dellandrea enough to one-off him over Drew O’Connor on PIT2. This decision obviously didn’t wind up mattering, as both Daws and MAF (who I think would have been the DOC 2v2 goalie) scored negative while the stacks each failed.

5. NSH1 + VGK1, Smith Demko. Brendan Smith playing with Luke Hughes, not much to say there other than a punt D is a punt D. Classic game stack, trying to take advantage of what wound up being a fairly entertaining game, just not in the way I expected.

6. VGK1 + FLA2 + DAL Double D. I discussed how FLA1 didn’t feel good enough to me to sacrifice other pieces of my lineup, and I caught wind of FLA3 getting ownership anyway (Lundell wound up the highest of the bunch at 7%, I haven’t run the sims to know if that is a good fade or not given how thin it feels), I decided to continue my run of playing Sam Bennett into zero fantasy production, which he obliged.

Results: My results were fairly poor, and I even game-stacked NSH-VGK on the late two-game slate and finished DFL there as well. Not a great day. There’s a world in which I did something like LA3 + WSH1 and maneuvered D well enough to make my way to the top of the leaderboards, but I didn’t feel like I needed LA3 value (and didn’t really feel strongly about potentially stacking into Kevin Fiala on either of the top two lines, who has simply been a black hole for fantasy). In retrospect, Malkin-Phillips was clearly not very high on my list and probably should have made zero of my lineups. I didn’t realize that game was going to have hefty ownership (more on that below).

WSH smashed, FLA failed, LA got there in a weird way (if you went to bed, this Byfield goal is tough to top for Goal Of The Year), MacKinnon didn’t bring his friends along with him in a 10 SOG effort (and an EN assist to keep his perfect season at home going), WPG1 smashed again (without Scheifele, this time), and the late slate was marred with injuries to both Viktor Arvidsson and Mark Stone. Given their injury histories, we can only hope for the best.

On a touch over $1,000 in entries, I returned $165 plus some RM pack tickets on the night to push $200. Not fun.

What Won: Voldemort.

Fuck, man. I really thought shanksalot was gonna stat-correct his way into the top spot with the late push from a UTIL Doughty scoring in the final minute and Talbot in goal picking up the W.

I’m not clear on the thought process behind Lafreniere at the same exact price as Oshie in this lineup. I’d love to make fun of Doughty in UTIL, but Harley and EK65 were in play as well, and sometimes you just need to be on the ice to get fantasy points, and Doughty has that in spades. Oshie wins this dude another $100k, but also this contest was not very punishing to the second place finisher, either…

Goalie assists were the name of the game last night, and I missed out on the party at the top.

Cicima also finished in 4th, 5th, 6th, and 12th on Tuesday night, thanks to Sorokin and WSH1 stacks. Beyond the winner, which featured MacKinnon and Tkachuk one-offs with PLD’s two-goal game, Cicima mixed in Montour and Pelech multi-point nights and several elements of WSH-NJ gamestacking, having Ovi in 32% of teams and Hughes in 40%.

Cicima always plays an aggressive style, tightly winding his lineups around a core set of plays/stacks, and it seems to have hit in a massive way on Tuesday. It goes to show that there are ways to deploy an optimizer (or be a hand-builder, I won’t rule anything out when it comes to this dude) differently than the majority of the field, who is far more likely to spread out their stacks and very rarely goes heavy into G/D one-off plays. When it hits, it HITS. For anyone in the lobby on a regular basis, we know it hits fairly regularly for this guy.

In the $25 FHWC Qualifier, shanksalot used that late push to pick up a FHWC seat as well as the $100k in the $555, narrowly edging out ElusiveSmoke in what may be the second most tilting way to win $50k on the night, as he did in the $555. The link is to my recap of the 2022 FHWC, where I lost out on the $100k 2nd prize by an OT SOG after said OT was forced by a late goal. I don’t think about it ever.

The $20 $50k top prize was won by garnes222 (ironically, the FBWC winner from 2022, as I mention in the podcast I linked to above that I am listening to again for old times’ sake) with a WSH PP1, WPG1 (minus Fat Mark), Karlsson Drouin 1 off fest. I can’t say I was ever getting to a lineup that looked like this (one-off Drouin, incredible stuff), but having the three best W scores on the slate in one lineup sure helps.

Also found in the top ten of this contest were LA3 (PLD x2, Byfield x1), McMichael (x2), Tkachuk + Montour (multi-point night for Montour, shot bonus + assist for Tkachuk), and Brock Nelson (goal, assist, 8 shots).

Links:

DK FHWC

DK $555

DK $20

Some other slate thoughts in reviewing the field’s play:

• Ilya Sorokin being the most popular goalie as an underdog at $7.3k in a 5.5 total, giving up 4 goals, getting an assist, save bonus, and 5-4 win is Peak NHL DFS. Goalies, man. 27% went that route, which simultaneously feels right but also insane.

• Going the other way, Rakell was 16% owned at $4.2k (PP1 L1 without Guentzel), Eller was 13% (PP1 after the shakeup last practice, $3k), the rest of PP1 was 8-10% and even Letang picked up 5% ownership. Considering approximately half the field played someone on PIT PP1 or Sorokin, I don’t think the 27% goalie was all that bad a play, and in retrospect I was clearly avoiding a lot of ownership to begin with and should have considered it, considering I lived in that range with my selections.

• Quinton Byfield as PP2, L3 correlation to PLD went off at just under 6% to PLD’s 16%. Props to those who were rewarded with Byfield’s 19.5 effort in an absolutely magical breakout season for Byfield, who is likely to slide back into a much larger role with Arvidsson seemingly back on the shelf. If not, it’s a clear Buy indicator for PLD, whose numbers look like the player he was before the trade. Meaning 1) he was always a bit overrated and 2) there’s some regression in his current scoring stats as well, which he’s already exploding into.

• Tip of the cap to noted NHL DFS sharp {checks notes} me, who avoided FLA1 chalk like the plague. A stack that is 10-15% owned and takes up such a significant chunk of the salary cap without the “main” guy on the team? No thanks. I love Samson and friends, but I feel good about my declaration that their path to DFS success was far more limited than the field was going to suggest.

• DFS is really a different animal. Coming off a record-breaking performance on Monday, MIN1 projected for 4% owned by the computers alone (unless Occupy Fantasy is utilizing manual boosts and I’m not aware of it!). The field played MIN1 at.. wait for it.. 4%, Kaprizov coming in exactly on the number 4.00%. Things like recency bias and the like still exist in the game, but to a far lesser degree than anyone who has been playing DFS for years might realize. Don’t let recency bias concerns swing you off of a player, as the field is unlikely to overreact to a recent strong performance, is what I’m trying to suggest. MIN1 did nothing and actually got broken up fairly early on, hilariously, but still interesting to note.

• After obliterating both the Bruins and the Rangers on back to back nights, I think the Stars are the best team in the NHL at the moment. I really, really like this team, even though they earned just one point for their efforts in these two games.

That’s it for now, there’s still one more day of juiced NHL contests thanks to the NBA’s return on Thursday. Good luck out there and, as always, thanks for reading.