Daily Fantasy Hockey Update: November 30, 2013

I will mention that I generally do not pick two players playing against each other in the same game for a daily lineup. The same applies for a goalie and a player from opposite teams. You might see two players among the “value picks” from opposite teams, but that doesn’t mean you should take them both. No matter the value, you’re also likely cannibalizing points, so any gains made below a certain price point – the point where production and cost intersect – can be lost if production declines overall as well.

There are many things that determine value: The player’s history (both short and long-term), the price, recent production, opponent, line matching at even-strength, power play time and injuries are just some of the factors to consider. The “Top Value” doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest player, either.

Finally, as far as goalie’s go, it’s the one position I’ll pay through the nose for if I really like the match-up. The same applies for back-ups with good match-ups. In a given night, with a full slate of games, I won’t have more than three different goalies across all my lineups, usually two. I’ll name the goalies I like specifically in the match-ups they appear in.

Here is today’s slate of games (and DraftDay values). Reminder: check Left Wing Lock for up-to-the-minute information on starting goalies.

Confidence in games are color-coded as follows:

Green means load up. Yellow means grab a couple of players. Red means value plays only.

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Today is a very weird day in the NHL schedule:

• Typically, Thursdays are a heavy NHL schedule, which gives most teams Friday night off.
• With American Thanksgiving this week, and only two games on Thursday, we had 12 games yesterday.
• Of the 22 teams involved in the 11 games on today’s schedule, 17 of them are playing the second night of a back-to-back. The only teams coming in fresh are Florida, Nashville, Vancouver, Phoenix and Los Angeles. Of those five teams, far-and-away the best match-up is Los Angeles at home to Calgary. Ben Scrivens is the fourth-most expensive goalie on Draft Day today, but it’s worth it considering the amount of uncertainty a day like today brings.
• What the plethora of back-to-back games means is that there will be very few morning skates, many game-time decisions, and a lot of last-minute goalie announcements. So if you’re the type to “set it and forget it”, for today, just throw $10 in a garbage disposal, avoid the heartache, and carry on with your day.
• The one solid piece of advice I can give you (that has been shown to be very accurate) is to not have any goalie on your team that also played last night. That means a lot of back up goalies, and potential value plays in net.

Under circumstances like today, previewing games is fairly pointless. It’s anyone’s guess what the roster composition will be and line combinations will look like, also to who will be in nets. Rather, I’ll provide the value plays that I like in each game as always (based off previous matchups and projected matchups), and as we get closer to game time, I will be on Twitter @SlimCliffy to help you sort through the mess that is the last day of November.

As I write this, I see this tweet pop up from Brett Cyrgalis, a sports writer for the New York Post:

Looking like Anders Nilsson to get the start in goal for the #Isles tonight vs the #Caps

— Brett Cyrgalis (@BrettCyrgalis) November 30, 2013

In case you were wondering why it’s impossible to predict a day like today, and why it’s prudent to wait until closer to the games, it’s tweets like that.

Buffalo Sabres at New Jersey Devils

Washington Capitals at New York Islanders

Pittsburgh Penguins at Florida Panthers

Columbus Blue Jackets at Boston Bruins

Toronto Maple Leafs at Montréal Canadiens

Philadelphia Flyers at Nashville Predators

Chicago Blackhawks at Phoenix Coyotes

Minnesota Wild at Colorado Avalanche

Calgary Flames at Los Angeles Kings

Anaheim Ducks at San Jose Sharks

Good luck with today’s games, and feel free to tweet me any time for lineup advice!

Michael Clifford

Michael Clifford was born and raised in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada and is a graduate of the Unviersity of New Brunswick. He writes about fantasy hockey and baseball for XNSports and FantasyTrade411.com. He can be reached on Twitter @SlimCliffy for any fantasy hockey questions. Follow @SlimCliffy !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=p+'://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js';fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document, 'script', 'twitter-wjs');

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