Daily Fantasy Hockey DFS Value Update – February 7

I generally do not pick two players playing against each other in the same game for a daily fantasy hockey lineup. The same applies for a goalie and a player from opposite teams. You might see two players among the “value picks” from opposite teams, but that doesn’t mean you should take them both. No matter the value, you’re also likely cannibalizing points, so any gains made below a certain price point – the point where production and cost intersect – can be lost if production declines overall as well.

There are many things that determine value: The player’s history (both short and long-term), the price, recent production, opponent, line matching at even-strength, power play time and injuries are just some of the factors to consider. The “Top Value” doesn’t necessarily mean the cheapest player, either.

Finally, as far as goalies go, it’s the one position I’ll pay through the nose for if I really like the match-up. The same applies for back-ups with good match-ups. In a given night, with a full slate of games, I won’t have more than three different goalies across all my lineups, usually two. I’ll name the goalies I like specifically in the match-ups they appear in.

Here is today’s slate of games (and DraftStreet values). Reminder: check Left Wing Lock for up-to-the-minute information on starting goalies.

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Games are color-coded as follows:

Green means load up. Yellow means grab a couple of players. Red means value plays only.

Edmonton Oilers at New Jersey Devils

Edmonton got a late goal from Nail Yakupov last night to topple the New York Rangers 2-1 in what was a surprising outcome. Tonight they visit New Jersey for their last game before the Olympic break.

Edmonton has just two wins this year in eight games that were the second of back-to-backs and the two wins were against Calgary three months ago and Vancouver a week ago. This is about par for the course for teams in B2B situations. The Oilers are 5-1-0 in their last six games overall but again, tonight they’ll have to rely on a Ben Scrivens on a back-to-back on the road (bad) or Ilya Bryzgalov (worse). Yes, give them credit for the wins, but as a team they’re shooting 11-percent over that stretch and their goaltenders have a .959 save percentage. Nothing this team is doing has changed; they’ve just hit a stretch of good fortune.

New Jersey themselves have just one win in their last five games and basically, they’ve hit the opposite stretch that Edmonton has – the team is shooting 7.3-percent in those games and the goaltending has been sitting at .862. Cory Schneider is expected to make his fifth consecutive start for the Devils tonight which gives the Devils a huge bump in net.

It’s always a gamble to bet against a streaking team (Edmonton) with one that’s at the literal opposite end of the puck-luck spectrum (New Jersey). I’ll trust my numbers and chug Gaviscon with this one, stacking certain Devils players in different GPPs and using Schneider in most of my LUs.

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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