The player pool doesn’t get much smaller than this for daily fantasy sports purposes as there are only three NHL games tonight. I went high-risk/high-reward yesterday and was not rewarded. Somehow the lineup still went 2-2 in head-to-heads. A win is a win so I’ll take it.
I’m going to take Miikka Kiprusoff in net as he’s only $6,200 and Calgary has won four straight home games while scoring 16 goals at home over that time. The caveat to this pick is the fact Detroit has won five out of their last six games in Calgary. So there are definite upsides and downsides to using Kiprusoff tonight. (thanks to sportsrumble.com for the stats)
This is the lineup I’ll play in some head-to-heads and some 50/50’s at FanDuel:
LW: Wayne Simmonds $6,500—Simmonds has had a rough time finding the back of the net recently but penalty minutes have not been a problem. He has 55 PIMS on the year and had seven against Buffalo on March 10.
LW: Michael Cammalleri $5,600—He sees time on Calgary’s first power play unit which gives him value at $5,600. He’s been in a bit of slump recently but our options are limited tonight. Jiri Hudler would also fit in this slot. Hudler also sees first unit power play time but his rating over his past three games (-5) scares me off a little.
RW: Jakub Voracek $7,100—Voracek burned us as few days ago with a -2 rating. What I did like was that he got four shots on net and Voracek is not afraid to shoot (78 shots on goal this season). I’ve been going back and forth with Jarome Iginla in this space. Iginla is only $6,400 and would fit.
RW: Ilya Kovalchuk $6,900—Kovalchuk has five points in his past four games including a two goal/seven shot performance on March 9.
C: Claude Giroux $7,300—Giroux’s rating over his past four games (-5) is part of the reason his price tag remains relatively low on FanDuel. But he does have three points over his past four games.
C: David Desharnais $5,100—If you go with Voracek, Desharnais is the guy I would play here. If you end up taking Iginla, I’d take Patrik Elias at $5,800. Right now I’m leaning toward a Iginla/Elias pairing for my lineups tonight—but I most likely will use a combo of the two in FanDuel tournaments that allow multiple entries.
D: Sergei Gonchar $4,700—Gonchar has five points in his past five games.
D: Kimmo Timonen $5,200—Timonen has five points in his past three games.
G: Miikka Kiprusoff $6,200
Good luck tonight.
