DFS Daily Fantasy Hockey Value Update – December 21

St. Louis Blues at Edmonton Oilers

St. Louis will again be without David Backes tonight, and that could be a problem when going into Edmonton; you want your best two-way players to play against the top skill guys of Edmonton and St. Louis is missing their best two-way player. That’s not to say Edmonton is a powerhouse – they’ve lost five straight games now, scoring just six goals in those games – but the skilled players will have a little bit more room to skate than there would otherwise be.

With the expectation that the Steen line will be matched with the Nugent-Hopkins line, this is a game where I would be looking at a lot of secondary options. When two strong lines face off against each other, you’ll usually want to avoid those players and focus on their teammates. That’s the idea here today.

I don’t know how high-scoring of a game this will be, as these two teams have just one power play goal between them in their last 10 games. If you’re relying on a lot of goals tonight, there will have to be a lot of five on five goals, and that is worrisome for plus/minus across other sites.

If you’re feeling adventurous tonight, I would take whoever starts for Edmonton, though it could very well be a 5-3 or 6-4 game, which means the goals against are a concern.

Other than the top lines, I will have quite a few players from this game. Neither of the goalies, but quite a few players.

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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