Daily Fantasy Saturday: Flames on Fire

Stephen Dotzel

2022-02-12

With the All-Star break complete, the Olympic break no longer a thing, and Covid seemingly on the decline – it's pedal to the metal for the rest of the NHL season. That's all good news for both season-long and daily fantasy. Despite that though, we've got a light slate in store for today with only five games on the docket thanks to a handful of early afternoon games.

With a small three-game slate at 12:30 p.m. EST, the five-game main slate at 7 p.m. EST, and another small four-game slate on Sunday, it sets up as a good time to take a look and experiment with our DraftKings DFS Player Evaluator over in the Frozen Tools. In addition to three formulas providing you with a projected fantasy point output, it also gives you each player's price, time on ice, last even-strength line, and last power-play unit – helping to give you a one-stop shop for building fantasy lineups.

Each of the fantasy point formulas have produced a small tournament – 100 entries or so – winning output over the past few weeks, so it's definitely worth a look. I still recommend working some correlation, or stacks, into your lineups, but the Player Evaluator can be a good tool to lead you in the right direction so be sure to check it out if you haven't already.

As for my own picks for Saturday's main slate, here is what I'm looking at. All prices are from DraftKings but plays can be applied to any site.

Primary Stacks

Calgary – My favorite spots to target in all of daily fantasy are against teams who are on a road-road back-to-back. It seems the combination of having just played the night before plus the travel plus also getting the backup goalie is too much to overcome many times, and the home team stands to benefit. A team in that spot tonight is the Flames, as the Isles just spent Friday night chasing around Connor McDavid and company. The Flames are red hot anyway, having won seven of eight by a combined score of 34-13, so I see little reason to not load them up here. The top line of Elias Lindholm ($6,600), Johnny Gaudreau ($7,600), and Matthew Tkachuk ($6,400) has been stellar and the emergence of Oliver Kylington ($3,700) offers you another affordable piece for a stack.

Nashville – Another team set to benefit from an opponent on a road back-to-back are the Preds. Winnipeg just played in Dallas on Friday and now travel to Nashville for tonight's tilt. The Preds have only played one game since February 1, so they should be well-rested here. I'm again looking at the top line with Filip Forsberg ($6,100), Matt Duchene ($5,300), and Mikael Granlund ($4,100). It's tough to fit Roman Josi ($7,400) in as well, who is certainly worth playing, so in some cases I will leave off one of the first line trio to help fit Josi.

Secondary Stacks

Calgary – Oh look, it's Calgary again. Overshadowed at times by the top line, the second line for Calgary has been nearly as good and always come in at a fraction of the ownership, and price. For whatever reason DraftKings continues to leave this trio's price tags near the site floor despite ridiculous production of late which I will touch on. Mikael Backlund ($3,300) has six points in his last two games and is my starting point for stacks with this line. With him I'm looking at two of the three between Blake Coleman ($3,200), Andrew Mangiapane ($3,300), and Kylington. Both Coleman and Mangiapane are on four-game point streaks and have combined for 12 points during that stretch.

St. Louis – As of late, there has been the Jordan Binnington Blues who have lost four of his last five starts, and the Ville Husso Blues who have won four of his last five starts. St. Louis has also averaged nearly an additional goal per game in Husso's starts during that stretch. I'm expecting him in net tonight so I like the Blues to perform well here. The lines and power-play units don't jibe well together in terms of correlation for the Blues, making them difficult to stack, however given the choice I will take the Jordan Kyrou ($5,700), Ryan O'Reilly ($5,900), Brayden Schenn ($4,200) line as you get the leading goal scorer in Kyrou with two top unit power play forwards in O'Reilly and Schenn.

Here a few others stacks to look at for your lineups:

John Tavares ($6,900), William Nylander ($5,800)

J.T. Miller ($5,100), Brock Boeser ($4,300), Oliver Ekman-Larsson ($3,400)

Cheap Power Play 1 Plugs

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C – Sean Monahan ($2,700), Jean-Gabriel Pageau ($2,900), Ryan Johansen ($3,100), Bo Horvat ($3,600)

W – Paul Stastny ($2,700), Brandon Hagel ($3,300), Matt Boldy ($4,000), David Perron ($4,100)

D – Ekman-Larsson ($3,400), Josh Morrissey ($4,300), Rasmus Andersson ($4,800)

Goalie Picks

Ville Husso ($8,300)

Juuse Saros ($8,000)

Jacob Markstrom ($8,200)

Thatcher Demko ($7,300)

Frederik Andersen ($7,600)

Be sure to double check your lineups before lock for any last-minute scratches or goalie changes. If you follow me on Twitter @SteveDotzel you can subscribe to my "DFS-NHL" list which is comprised of several team beat writers tweeting the most recent news in real-time. You can also reach out to me personally and I'll do my best to answer any questions I can. Hope to see you on top of the leaderboards!

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