Daily Fantasy Hockey DFS Value Update – January 14th

San Jose Sharks at Washington Capitals

As I’ve noted before in this column, it’s been a pretty steady slide for the San Jose Sharks; after starting the season 18-3-5, they’ve gone 10-9-1 since, losing as many games as they’ve won for a quarter of the season. In conjunction with Anaheim’s recent ridiculous streak, they’ve gone from one point up on the Ducks at the end of November in the standings to 13 points behind.

A lot of this has to do with goaltender Antti Niemi, whose .917 even-strength save percentage is the same mark as now-injured Islanders goaltender Evgeni Nabokov. It’s hard to win if your goalie can’t stop pucks and while Niemi has been better over the last couple of games, it’s not enough to make me think some turnaround is ahead.

Washington is 3-1 at home against the West since the start of November, which includes wins against Minnesota and St. Louis and their only loss was a close 3-2 game to Anaheim. Despite the Caps not being a very good five on five hockey team, they are excellent on the power play. This could be a problem for them as San Jose has only given up two power play goals against in their last eight games.

Because of the East-West matchup, it’s a bit tougher to judge how this will go. For that reason, I’d rather stay away from the goalies and pick away at the skaters.

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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