Daily Fantasy Hockey DFS Value Update – December 29

Pittsburgh Penguins at Columbus Blue Jackets

This is a game between two teams that have had an excellent month of December, as they’ve combined to go 17-5-1 in 23 combined games this month.

Pittsburgh is starting to get healthy, with the return of Brooks Orpik and Tanner Glass coming in their first game after the break. They will still be without Evgeni Malkin, but that hasn’t hurt their secondary scoring too much as James Neal has one goal and four assists in four games without Geno by his side.

One aspect where the Pens have been missing Malkin is on the power play, as they’re operating at just an 11.1-percent efficiency since Malkin went out with an injury. It hasn’t hurt their overall game too much seeing as the team has gone 5-1 without him and they’ve scored 19 goals in those six games, but they would like to see their special teams kick up a notch, and they need him to do that.

Columbus has won three straight games overall and are 4-1-1 at home in the month of December. Even though they’ve struggled on the power play themselves, they have only allowed four power play goals against in 11 games this month. I would anticipate a close game, especially with Jeff Zatkoff starting for Pittsburgh, so I would be tempted to use Curtis McElhinney if necessary (though, it’s not overly recommended).

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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