Daily Fantasy Hockey Value Plays – December 3

Tampa Bay Lightning at Columbus Blue Jackets

Games like this scare me because you could reasonably pick any of 15 players from either team and say to yourself, “yep, they could score tonight”.

Since Steven Stamkos was injured for Tampa Bay, their power play has been sputtering along at a 14.3-percent clip. They also haven’t been scoring consistently, tallying one or fewer total goals in four of those nine games.

Not to say Columbus’ offense has been any better recently. Over their last seven games, the Blue Jackets have fewer than 20 shots in five of them, and haven’t cracked 30 shots in nine straight games. Ben Bishop is playing too well in net for Tampa Bay for them to only be relied upon for 20-25 shots and expecting a good fantasy performance from anyone. The movable force meets the stoppable object in this contest.

Ottawa Senators at Florida Panthers

Speaking of two inept teams, Florida and Ottawa are a combined 4-10-1 in their last 15 games and 10-15-5 since November 1.

If I’m picking players off of either team, give me some Ottawa Senators; the Sens are have nine goals on their last 37 power plays (24.3-percent) while the Panthers are an absolutely abysmal 53.3-percent on the penalty kill over their last five games.

One last thing about how especially bad the Panthers are. For the season, Florida is last in the NHL in GoalsFor-percent at 27.6 in close games. That means, hypothetically, for every 100 goals scored at even strength in Florida games, they would only score 27.6 of them, and their opponent would score 72.4. That is beyond pathetic.

Dallas Stars at Chicago Blackhawks

This would have been an especially tantalizing game about a week ago. However, Dallas will be without Tyler Seguin (concussion) for a bit and Stéphane Robidas (broken leg) for a long time. That’s their first line centre, who was nearly a point-per-game player, and a top pairing defenseman. You don’t overcome those losses overnight, go into the house of the defending Stanley Cup champions and expect to succeed. It’s a bad spot for anyone on Dallas.

If it’s that bad for Dallas, it’s equally good for Chicago. Michal Handzus has been brought up to the second line to centre Patrick Kane and Brandon Saad. The Hawks are on a six-game winning streak and have scored 22 goals over that stretch. This one seems pretty obvious.

If you’re looking for match-ups, I would assume the Toews line will be matched up against Peverley’s line, which is a downgrade for many cheap Dallas options.

Vancouver Canucks at Nashville Predators

Both teams are going into this game a little dinged up.

Alex Burrows (broken jaw) is out indefinitely for Vancouver (which is too bad, he was priming for a hot streak) and Shea Weber will miss his second game in a row. The first game post-Weber didn’t go so well for Nashville, a 3-2 shootout loss to the Flyers.

Typically, Weber would have played nearly every second of this game against the Sedin twins. With Weber out, most of this responsibility should go to Seth Jones. The rookie has had a very solid year, but any rookie defenseman will probably get eaten alive by the Sedins. That top line in Vancouver got a big value boost this morning. I would expect Mike Santorelli to get some time with the top line, as he has in parts of this year already.

Nashville’s power play, which had been integral to any success the team has had this year, has gone cold, going just 1-for-12 over their last five games. This problem is going to be compounded without the booming shot of Shea Weber coming in from the point. Again, this game seems fairly straightforward (so why am I so worried about stacking Canucks players?).

Phoenix Coyotes at Edmonton Oilers

Phoenix is in the top six NHL teams in both goals for/game and goals against/game. This bears out in the results, as you see they went October 29 – November 27 without allowing fewer than two goals, but also managed to score at least two goals in each game as well. They are just 2-3-2 over their last seven games, though, and haven’t allowed fewer than 27 shots in any game since October 22. Those, along with their 27^th-ranked penalty kill that has gone a brutal 71.4-percent over those last seven games, point to a lot of goals tonight.

Edmonton, conversely, is 5-2 in their last seven games with a power play that is rolling along at 20-percent over that stretch. Devan Dubnyk is back in net for Edmonton, and has allowed just 11 goals in his last six starts. Phoenix’s scoring touch does worry me, though, so I’m not sure Dubnyk is a great start, even though I expect him to get the win.

Los Angeles Kings at Anaheim Ducks

The Kings held on for a tough 3-2 win at home last night to the St. Louis Blues, but now have a quick turnaround to face one of three teams with at least 40 points so far this year in the Anaheim Ducks. That’s a pretty tough back-to-back.

Either way, this is going to be a very tight-checking affair. The Kings haven’t scored on the power play in six straight games, while the Ducks have killed off 18 straight penalties. The Kings penalty kill has killed 18 of their last 19 times shorthanded, the Ducks power play has only recently found some consistency.

Without the expectation of special teams prowess, both teams in the top 10 in puck possession, and both teams in the bottom half of the league in goals against, I wouldn’t expect a ton of goals. If anything, the edge goes to Anaheim here, as it’s expected that Ben Scrivens will make back-to-back starts in back-to-back nights.

Good luck today and as always, feel free to tweet me @SlimCliffy for specific questions.

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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