Dallas Stars at Nashville Predators
Dallas has been probably the NHL’s coldest team of 2014, starting this calendar year 1-7-1 and they now find themselves nine points back of a playoff spot. Everything has been falling at the same time; their PDO has been in a free-fall and their FenwickClose has been in near-steady decline since the start of January. When you combine that with a power play that has just started to sustain itself and a penalty kill that has been teetering around the bottom-third of the league, you get a team in a big slide. They have the talent to get out of it and their underlying numbers are showing improvements over the last few games.
Nashville is still Nashville. Hopefully you were able to stay away from Devan Dubnyk in his debut for the Predators, because this team is not that much better defensively than his former team the Edmonton Oilers; the Predators allow essentially one fewer shot at five-on-five per game than the Oilers do and their team penalty kill rates are right next to each other in efficiency. If you want some value from Nashville tonight, the Predators’ power play is 5-for-13 in their last three games and is seventh in the league on the season.
These two teams met in December with each team taking the game in their respective barns. Coincidentally, the game that Nashville won, they scored two goals on the power play. The game that Nashville lost saw them go 0-for-3 on the power play.
This is a bit of a toss-up for me tonight. If I didn’t watch the game and saw the final of “3-1 Dallas” I wouldn’t be surprised. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see “3-1 Nashville”. In that sense, I’ll be staying away from the goalies tonight and focusing on the value plays, namely the Nashville power play.
|
Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
|
(DAL) $7800 |
Ray Whitney $7500 |
Craig Smith $8400 |
(NSH) $7600
|
Matt Cullen $6100 |
