Daily Fantasy Hockey DFS Value Update – January 4, 2014

Washington Capitals at Minnesota Wild

As goes the Washington power play, so goes their team. In the five games in the last month that this team hasn’t scored on the power play, they are 1-1-3. This has forced things like moving Alex Ovechkin down to the second line. It’s not like Ovechkin isn’t getting chances, he has 40 shots on goal in his last five games, but he’s only scored on one of them so it’s kind of a panic setting in on the team.

Minnesota stopped the bleeding a couple of nights ago with a 4-1 win over Buffalo, a win that ended a six-game losing streak. This shouldn’t be all that indicative of a team turning things around, though: Buffalo is a pretty poor road team and mustered only 20 shots on net. This should be a tougher test tonight.

Of course the big news is that Minnesota goalie Josh Harding is missing games with what is only being called an illness. His health history, it appears, is becoming a factor in his ability to stay on the ice consistently, and that’s terrible news for him and his family.

What that does mean is this is all on Niklas Backstrom, who hasn’t played well at all in net this year. If Minnesota can keep Washington off the power play, they have a shot in this game. If not, this could be bad news for the Wild. I will avoid most players in this game, though, and will not be taking either goalie that happens to start.

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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