Daily Fantasy Hockey Value Update – December 10, 2013

Nashville Predators at New York Rangers

Marek Mazanec was a real nice story for a struggling Predators team after the loss of franchise goalie Pekka Rinne. Mazanec even won ‘Player of the Month’ in November.

However, this is December. In Mazanec’s three December starts, he has a 4.57 goals against average and a save percentage of .848. Basically, he’s a rookie goalie playing on a so-so team that’s getting eaten alive by players he shouldn’t have to play against. It’s not an indictment on Mazanek’s career path, he’s just a young goalie in the NHL. That usually doesn’t go well. Even if Carter Hutton gets the start (neither are confirmed), my thoughts on this game don’t change.

This game is all about the Rangers. They have lost three of their last four games but they didn’t get brutally outplayed in any of them, and there’s a bit of puck-luck (and bad goaltender management) at play.

Nashville doesn’t score many goals if they don’t score on the power play, and their power play is ice cold. Conversely, the Rangers are 89.6-percent on their last 29 penalty kills, which bodes well for Henrik Lundqvist. Unless I have a ton of room, I wouldn’t start either goalie, but I’m looking at a lot of Rangers skaters tonight.

St. Louis Blues at Winnipeg Jets

St. Louis has lost three of their last four games, albeit to San Jose, Los Angeles and Anaheim, all among the best in the NHL. This seems like a mismatch, but the Jets have already beat St. Louis in Winnipeg this year, and lost a very close 3-2 game in St. Louis.

When you look at these teams on paper, there’s really not a whole lot of a difference between them: Both teams don’t have high-end forwards besides maybe one player, both teams have a captain that is probably a bit underappreciated in the fantasy game, both teams rely on skilled defensemen to generate offense. The biggest difference between the two teams has typically been in net, where Jaroslav Halak is good, and Ondrej Pavelec is not.

That difference gets mitigated tonight as Brian Elliott is already confirmed for the Blues. It’s not a surprise – Halak got pulled his last time out – but Elliott’s .909 save percentage over his last 33 games doesn’t not instill much confidence in me.

I wouldn’t be shy to take skilled players all over the board here, but would shy from either goalie.

Chicago Blackhawks at Dallas Stars

With Corey Crawford not traveling with the team due to injury, expect Antti Raanta to get the nod tonight in net for Chicago, with Kari Lehtonen going for Dallas.

This is the third meeting in the last two weeks between these two teams, with each team taking one game. The Hawks lost at home despite badly outplaying a Dallas team that was then without Tyler Seguin, while the Stars lost at home in a shootout four days prior to that.

The difference in this game might be the loss of Stéphane Robidas, who suffered a broken leg a couple of weeks back and is likely out for the year. When these two teams last met without him, the Blackhawks put up 50 shots on goals. Kari Lehtonen is a very good goalie, but he’s not that good.

For most of the last two games between these two teams, it was the Patrick Kane line and not the Jonathan Toews line with the responsibility of shutting down the duo of Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn. That frees up the top line in Chicago to take advantage of secondary players. I wouldn’t want either goalie, but I’ll have a lot of players from this game.

Phoenix Coyotes at Colorado Avalanche

Phoenix has been on a bit of a slide lately, going 3-4-3 in their last 10 games, and have lost two of their first three games on this road trip (one in overtime). For the most part, they’ve beaten teams they’re supposed to and lost to good teams. One of those good teams they’ve lost to recently is Colorado, a 4-3 overtime loss on November 21.

Colorado has gone seven straight games without a power play goal and not surprisingly have only scored 13 goals over that stretch. Mostly, this team has been winning games with great goaltending performances.

Matt Duchene is a catalyst offensively for this team but just hasn’t been the same since returning from an oblique injury, as he’s gone six games without a goal (seven straight overall) and has just one assist over that stretch. I have no doubt that he’s playing injured, but it’s hurting his value and that of his line mates, particularly on the power play.

Colorado’s goaltending is playing well enough that I don’t really like Phoenix tonight, but until I see Duchene turn things around, I’m not a big fan of the Avalanche, either.

Boston Bruins at Calgary Flames

In what a fantasy colleague of mine would call a #REVENGE game, Jarome Iginla returns to Calgary as a member of the Boston Bruins (or any other team) for the first time in his career.

I don’t really like to put stock into motivations that may or may not exist, but I would assume there’s a bit of extra motivation for both Iginla and his Bruins teammates here tonight. Not that they really need much, Calgary hasn’t tallied more than 28 shots in eight straight games, but have given up at least 30 in four of them. This is a bad possession team (Calgary) playing a good possession team (Boston) and one of the Bruins top forwards has extra incentive to play well tonight.

Boston is already 2-1-2 against the West this year, an uncommon mark for an Eastern team playing cross-conference games, and there are wins against San Jose and Anaheim in there.

A lot of Iginla’s long time teammates like Miikka Kiprusoff, Jay Bouwmeester and Alex Tanguay are no longer with Calgary, so I’m not buying that Calgary has extra motivation tonight. Boston does have a bit of motivation tonight, and are the better team anyway. I like Tuukka Rask to get the win, sprinkled with some cheap Bruins.

Carolina Hurricanes at Edmonton Oilers

Carolina was shutout last night in Vancouver despite putting 31 shots on net but is still 6-3-1 in their last 10 games and 3-3 in their last six. Edmonton lost in overtime to Calgary on Saturday, but is still 6-3-1 in their last 10 games and 3-2-1 in their last six. Basically, these are two similar teams (not in roster composition, but in streaks) where one team is on a West Coast road trip playing on back to back nights while the other team is at home and rested.

The Oilers are drawing a TON of penalties recently, having had 32 power plays in their last five games. The problem is they aren’t converting too many of them, having gone just 15.6-percent over those chances. Here’s the bright side: Carolina’s 81.3-percent is a bit of a mirage as it relates to likely starter Cam Ward. In his seven games since coming back from injury, Carolina’s penalty kill is just 77.7-percent, which is typically bottom-five in the NHL. It’s a small sample, but Ward hasn’t played very well recently either, so if the Oilers can draw five or six power plays, I wouldn’t be surprised if they converted half of them.

I even like Devan Dubnyk in tonight’s game if you want a cheap option in net. Basically, I have a few reasons to ride the Oilightning tonight, and will be doing so.

New York Islanders at San Jose Sharks

These are the games that a coach will lose their job over.

The Islanders have been absolutely awful as of late, having lost 10 straight games and 15 of their last 17 overall. This has seen them tumble from a potential playoff team to the bottom of the Metro division and fewer points overall than the Florida Panthers. So far in their first three games of their Western road trip, the Islanders have been outscored 13-3 and have given up 13 power play chances. You do not want to be playing bad hockey and taking a lot of penalties when you’re going into San Jose.

I did some video editing this morning and here’s a preview of tonight’s game:

Take the Sharks, avoid Antti Niemi as the Islanders still have power play potential, and you should be raking in points tonight. Let’s just say you’ll have a better night than coach Jack Capuano.

Good luck with tonight’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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