COVID protocol has been making a strong onset through the NHL in the past week or so. Keeping an eye on news is imperative to succeeding at NHL DFS. Following my twitter beat writer lists is a huge advantage for getting last-minute news and scratches. This Power Play article will use Awesemo’s Premium NHL Tools to help dole out the NHL DFS advice to help with building lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel tonight. The Awesemo NHL projections and ownership projections are two of the best tools to utilize when constructing stacks and making the optimal NHL DFS picks. Let us go position by position and pinpoint some of the top plays and stacks for Saturday, January 29th.
NHL DFS Picks, Top Stacks & Lineup Optimizer Plays
Center
Auston Matthews (TOR at DET): DraftKings – $9,200 FanDuel – $10,200
There are a handful of expensive centers tonight despite the low number of games for a Saturday. We can’t play them all – or not comfortably – so choosing between them is important. Auston Matthews heads into Detroit and this team has been on a defensive slide of sorts partly because the Red Wings have moved Tyler Bertuzzi off the top line. With him not skating with Dylan Larkin, the team’s shot share falls from 51% to 44%. If they go with a third-line matchup, well, that’s not going to go a whole lot better. That should leave Matthews and his cohorts in favorable matchups of their own, and hopefully a good night follows.
This particular top line for Toronto is controlling 59% of the shot attempts when they’re on the ice, generating 37 scoring chances per 60 minutes, all great numbers. The power play is great, he’s a high-shot volume threat, and the matchup itself is solid. While there are a number of good spots across the slate tonight, Matthews is at the top of our priority list. He is fine in all formats by himself, but is best used in some sort of stack for tournaments.
Travis Boyd (ARI vs. BUF): DraftKings – $3,100 FanDuel – $4,800
The Arizona Coyotes might be running a bit hot shooting percentage-wise, but they’ve also improved offensively. They are 26th in expected goals generated per 60 minutes since Christmas (2.14), which may not seem great, but they were dead last in the league leading up to Christmas (1.87). A big part of the turnaround is Travis Boyd’s line, which was generating 2.2 expected goals per 60 minutes heading into Friday night’s contest. It seems like faint praise, but being close to league average in this category on a team that was at the bottom of the league a month ago is no small feat.
A big reason for wanting to use Arizona tonight is not only their competition, but their opponent’s goalie situation. The Buffalo Sabres currently have six injured goalies. Not a typo – six injured goalies. They have two potential starters in Craig Anderson and Dustin Tokarski but reporters don’t seem optimistic either can play. If they do, they seem to be rushing back. If they don’t, Buffalo is down to their seventh-string goalie. None of these are good options.
Boyd’s line is playing well and they’ll get depth matchups against a bad team with a goaltending situation that is nothing short of a disaster. The price may draw ownership, but Boyd and his line mates are targets. One caveat: Johan Larsson was a late scratch last night, and that could push Boyd into tougher matchups, but he also skated over 21 minutes. That is the trade-off.
Winger
Matthew Tkachuk (CGY vs. VAN): DraftKings – $6,500 FanDuel – $8,900
Matthew Tkachuk might be on one of the quietest hot streaks in recent NHL memory: 10 goals and 25 points in his last 17 games, averaging 3.7 shots per game. In that span, his line is generating nearly 40 scoring chances per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, with 3.7 expected goals per 60 and 4.8 actual goals. They are torching – pun intended – the competition and while this particular stretch has been ridiculous, it’s been like this, more or less, all season.
The opponent tonight is Vancouver and the Canucks have been an improved team in a lot of respects over the last couple months, but the penalty kill is still bad. Since Christmas, they are 31st in expected goals and shot attempts allowed while short-handed, with a bottom-10 goals against rate. Conversely, the Flames are first by shot attempts taken while on the power play, and that presents a mismatch for Tkachuk and the Flames tonight.
Using Tkachuk tonight is a matter of what a DFS player is doing with their lineup. The entire line is perfectly fine together as a stack, though with his shot rate he’s acceptable as a one-off.
Jeff Skinner (BUF at ARI): DraftKings – $5,500 FanDuel – $5,600
On the flipside of that Arizona game mentioned earlier is Jeff Skinner and the Sabres. The return of Alex Tuch to the lineup, and the top line, has helped Skinner a lot since the calendar turned to 2022: 10 points in 10 games, averaging 3.3 shots per game. The line hasn’t been great at 5-on-5 in particular, but they are generating 28 shot attempts per 60 minutes at 5-on-5, and 3.2 expected goals. It is the defensive numbers that are hurting, but we look for offence in DFS.
Since Christmas, the Arizona Coyotes have arguably the worst penalty kill in the league, depending on which metric we’re using. The Buffalo top PP unit is approaching 100 shot attempts per 60 minutes, which would be mid-pack across the league in a larger sample. A league-average power play is more than enough to succeed against a penalty kill this bad.
With the prices getting a bit expensive, it’s a question to use Skinner as a one-off. He can get there as a shooter, but he needs to do a lot to be optimal without his line mates doing anything. Skinner should be used as part of some sort of stack in tournaments, though if he’s the last guy in a lineup, that’s fine as well, especially on FanDuel where he’s relatively cheaper.
Evander Kane (EDM at MTL): DraftKings – $2,500 FanDuel – $4,500
The return of Evander Kane to the NHL means a mis-pricing. He hasn’t played at all in the 2021-22 season due to various off-ice issues, which resulted in his contract being terminated. Now he’s lining up beside the top offensive center in hockey, and because he hasn’t played all season, he’s priced down across the industry.
Kane looks to be starting on the top line with Connor McDavid, and that likely means heavy minutes at 5-on-5 and on the power play. Back in San Jose, he was landing roughly 3.5 shots per game while skating 19-20 minutes a night. If he gets roughly the same ice time in Edmonton, we have a baseline for his shot rate, and it’s obscenely high for his price.
With his price and his lineup role, Kane is assuredly going to have a sky-high ownership rate tonight. Just beware that not every player can pay off a min-price on every night, so it’s far from a guarantee that Kane finds DFS success. All the same, if he hits his upside given his fantasy profile, we could see him at three times his price on DraftKings and double his price on FanDuel in the next few weeks. Anyone needs a punt that has tremendous upside need look no further.
Latest NHL DFS Content
Defensemen
Evan Bouchard (EDM at MTL): DraftKings – $5,300 FanDuel – $6,100
While Kane brings a new presence to the lineup, it shouldn’t change a whole lot for Evan Bouchard. The young defenseman has three goals in his last three games now that he’s been moved to the top PP unit, skating 25 minutes a night. He won’t score a goal every night, but his team is loaded with weapons and he’s still not seen his price jump too high yet.
Edmonton is second in the league in shot attempts generated on the power play since the holiday break and Montreal is giving up the second-most shot attempts. This is a good power-play matchup, so it’s a good night to use Bouchard.
Damon Severson (NJD at CAR): DraftKings – $4,200 FanDuel – $5,800
In the nine games since Dougie Hamilton’s injury, Damon Severson is skating nearly 26:30 a night. We need to be careful here about a potential Hamilton return, as he has been skating with the team of late. It doesn’t mean a return is imminent but it’s something to watch for. He would have a big ice-time impact on Severson.
Otherwise, Severson is a target for us tonight. It is not often we can get a defenseman getting that much ice time – and he’s running the top PP unit as well – at his price. He is not a player to target in cash games because he is more production-reliant than on peripherals, but he doesn’t need to do a lot in his ice time to pay his price.
Goalie
Andrei Vasilevskiy (TBL vs. VGK): DraftKings – $7,900 FanDuel – $8,200
Among all the goalies skating tonight, over the last three years, Andrei Vasilevskiy leads in high-danger save percentage, one of our best indicators of goalie talent. It isn’t really close, either, as the next-closest goalie on this slate (Mikko Koskinen) is nearly 20 points behind him in this regard.
Vegas comes into town tonight and while they are a high-octane team that can score a lot of goals, Vasilevskiy is arguably the best at stopping every kind of shot. A potentially high shot volume faced is what draws us to Vasilevskiy here, and he is fine to use in all formats.
Top NHL DFS Stacks
CAR1: Teravainen-Aho-Jarvis
The way Carolina runs their lines is their top line often plays against the bottom-6 of the opposition. That means avoiding both Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier at 5-on-5, and that’s great news for Sebastian Aho and his friends. His ice time and his shot rate can be inconsistent, so that’s what makes it hard to use Aho in cash games. That is precisely what makes him a tournament target, though, and their ownership is in check tonight.
ARI2: Boyd-Keller-Schmaltz
As mentioned in the section on Boyd, the Sabres are missing at least four goalies, perhaps up to six, and if any of those six play, none seem to be 100% themselves. This line while avoid the top line from Buffalo and with the Sabres top line off the ice, the team is controlling just 39% of the shot attempts. This is a great matchup both in goal and among the skaters for this line, just beware of high ownership. The lack of goalies for Buffalo won’t be a secret tonight.
*Additional stats from Natural Stat Trick
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