Daily Fantasy Hockey Value Update – January 8, 2014

New York Rangers at Chicago Blackhawks

The Rangers are coming off a shootout loss at home to the Columbus Blue Jackets, which shouldn’t be much of a surprise as they are one of the worst home teams in the East. On the flipside, they are tied for the East lead in road wins with 13, so they are not to be discounted tonight.

The Blackhawks are coming off a shootout loss at home themselves to San Jose on Sunday night. That gives the ‘Hawks three losses in their last five games, all of them coming by way of overtime or the shootout though. A bit more concerning, though, is that they have scored just 10 goals in their last four games, half of those in a 5-3 win against New Jersey, and have drawn just seven power play opportunities in those four contests.

I expect this to be the highest-scoring game of the night. The Rangers have scored 21 goals in their last five games (4.2 goals/game) against the Eastern Conference dating back to the first of December while the Rangers have 12 goals in their last three games, averaging over 42 shots on goal per game. The Rangers’ power play has converted three of their last nine opportunities, and get the 28^th-ranked penalty kill tonight.

The best play in this game tonight is to avoid both starting goalies and pick from the players, this game should get to seven total goals.

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');

See Full Bio