Daily Fantasy Hockey Update – Saturday, December 7

Florida Panthers at Detroit Red Wings

This is a toss-up game. The Florida Panthers are a pretty bad team while Detroit is playing their third game in four nights, and the second of a back-to-back.

Florida has two road wins since Opening Night and is allowing the third-most goals against of any team while away from home. In all, they aren’t a good bet to do much tonight, so I would stay away unless it’s just a basement-price play to help make your lineups work.

Detroit is still without Pavel Datsyuk and Henrik Zetterberg and the assumption is that Jimmy Howard would get the start tonight. None of these things give me a lot of confidence.

Realistically, it’s tough to get a good read on this game. I could argue “Florida is in a good position to steal a game from a tired, old team missing their best players” and I can also see the “Detroit is just a better team than Florida from top to bottom” argument. Usually when a game like this happens (especially on a big slate like today), I just stay away as a general rule.

Winnipeg Jets at Tampa Bay Lightning

The Jets are coming off a beatdown to the Panthers, where they lost 5-2 on Thursday night. Tampa Bay is coming off a win where they got outplayed by Ottawa for most of the game.

The expectation is that Evander Kane will miss tonight’s game for Winnipeg, which means both teams are essentially one line teams. Making the Jets problems even worse is that their power play has gone ice cold after failing to convert on 15 straight opportunities. When a team is missing its most dynamic player and struggles to score with the man advantage, it doesn’t bode well for their chances to tally goals.

Credit is due where it is due, and Ben Bishop has been marvelous as of late. After looking shaky early in November, he has settled down very well recently, allowing just five goals in his last five games (amazingly, three of those games were losses). So while I would like to say that Bishop is a good start today, and he technically is, he very well could lose this game 2-1 in a shootout. In fact, in the last two games Bishop has allowed one goal against, he’s lost them both. Tampa Bay can’t score, and that doesn’t help Bishop’s fantasy value.

Nashville Predators at Washington Capitals

The Predators have lost four games in a row while the Capitals have lost five of their last seven. Oh joy.

Nashville is having a real problem scoring, and it’s all to do with their power play. Before this losing streak, power play goals accounted for over 28-percent of their goals. It’s no coincidence that while their power play has gone 0-for-13 over the last four games, they lost them all and scored just five goals over that stretch. They could find a way to break through – Washington’s penalty kill is under 70-percent over their last nine games – but then there’s Braden Holtby to contend with.

Washington is a bit of an overrated team. Their problems are masked by Ovechkin’s scoring prowess and Braden Holtby’s marvelous play. In fact, the underlying numbers show that Washington and Nashville are very similar teams this year in on-ice performance, and the difference is pretty much Ovechkin and Holtby.

Finally, Nashville should be seeing the return of Shea Weber tonight. That will be a big boost to a team that is stuck in a slide. This is another game that could finish 3-2 for either side, so I don’t like any goalie that starts tonight in this game.

New Jersey Devils at New York Rangers

I think the New Jersey Devils are a good team, and I also think there’s no way that the Rangers don’t walk all over them tonight.

There’s no question the Devils are an elder team relying on guys like Patrik Elias, Jaromir Jagr and Michael Ryder. Tonight’s game also make three games in four nights for them, and they are coming off an 11-shot performance last night. Over their last four games, the Devils have scored seven goals total and are going into MSG to face a team that has scored fewer than two goals just once in their last eight games.

The Rangers have played much better hockey lately than what their record would dictate (5-5 in their last 10 games) and the top line of Rick Nash, Derek Stepan and Chris Kreider has looked unstoppable at times. The question mark for the Rangers is which Henrik Lundqvist shows up in net tonight; the one who stopped 28 of 29 shots (0.966-percent) in his last game, or the one who only stopped 45 of the 53 previous shots he faced (0.849-percent). This seems like a good spot, but I just don’t like paying the price you’ll have to pay for King Henrik, especially considering he’s 0-2 against the Devils already this year.

Anaheim Ducks at St. Louis Blues

Murder Week continues for Anaheim, as they’ve already gone to three shootouts in the previous seven days against San Jose, Los Angeles and Chicago. Impressively, they’ve taken four of six points from three of the best teams in the NHL, and face off against a fourth tonight in St. Louis.

Anaheim is having no problem scoring goals, tallying 15 in their last five games and converting at least one power play in four of those games. Typically, they’ve been a good road team, but in their last four contests away from the Honda Centre, they’ve averaged over 34 shots against. That’s not something you want to boast when going to visit a team that has scored 25 goals in their last five home games.

As mentioned, the Blues have been very good at home this year. In fact, they have a +27 goal differential at home this year, which is the best in the NHL. They will be playing an Anaheim team that went to a shootout last night against Chicago and probably didn’t arrive in St. Louis until the early morning. Anaheim is a good team, but St. Louis are monstrous at home and if the Ducks show any signs of fatigue, this could get out of hand as the game wears on.

Calgary Flames at Edmonton Oilers

In Calgary’s last three games, they have a win against Los Angeles in Los Angeles and a loss against Colorado at home. Edmonton beat Colorado 8-2 in their last game, and lost 6-2 to Phoenix the game before that. In short, these are two of the NHL’s most inconsistent (bad) teams.

I’m a guy that will take risks in daily games. I am nowhere near risky enough to take either goalie from this game. Both of these teams are in the bottom three in terms of goals against/game this year, and they have combined to go 5-5 in their last 10 total games. Edmonton upended Calgary 4-2 a few weeks ago, which would probably sound about right for a game like tonight. Calgary is essentially Edmonton with a lot less skill.

Edmonton’s power play is 4-for-13 in their last two games, but was 1-for-19 in the four games before that. If Calgary can say anything, it’s that they have a decent penalty kill that has now killed off 12 straight penalties and 24 of the last 25.

I don’t feel comfortable stacking either team, but I wouldn’t mind picking off a couple of Edmonton players if my budget dictated it.

New York Islanders at Los Angeles Kings

On paper, this looks like a game that is prime territory for a dismantling. The Islanders have lost eight straight games and allowed 33 goals over that stretch. Los Angeles has won back to back games against Cup contenders (Anaheim, St. Louis) and have had five days’ rest.

In reality, this is exactly how it looks on paper. Beyond the top line in New York, there really isn’t a whole lot going on: Frans Nielsen, Josh Bailey and Michael Grabner have a total of four points in their last 24 games combined (and Grabner has zero points since October 17^th). Typically, a guy like John Tavares is matchup-proof in daily leagues. However, considering the disparity between these two teams, I would shy away from any Islanders player.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the Kings will completely wax them, at least on the scoreboard. This could very well be a 3-0 win with 50 total shots in the game (a shot total that’s failed to have been surpassed in four of LA’s last seven games). However, if there was ever a game for the Kings offense to breakout, this seems like a good one.

Good luck with today’s games!

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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