Daily Fantasy Saturday: Bruins an Ideal Four-Player Stack
Stephen Dotzel
2022-03-05
In case you may have missed it, I put together a summary article of winning DraftKings tournament lineups from the past month which you can read here Winning Lineups Recap. Without repeating too much of what you can find in that article, some common trends emerged between players that were used and how the lineups were built.
A few of the takeaways that have stuck with me include making sure all players in my lineup are on a power-play unit, having at least five players in my lineup on a top power play, and having at least one three-player stack in all my lineups with a majority of them having a four-player stack. The caveat to the four-player stacks is that they all should be correlated with each other through a mix of even-strength and power-play time with at least three of the four on the top power-play unit. In addition, the four players should have a cumulative salary of $25,000 or less in order to have enough remaining salary to fill out the rest of the lineup with still quality options.
I will try to tailor my article this week to building lineups with some of the patterns I uncovered in the recap article and we'll see if they hold true for the Saturday slate. As always, in addition to this article, be sure to give a look to the DraftKings DFS Player Evaluator over in the Frozen Tools for another perspective and some other lineup ideas. A bit of a smaller slate tonight with only six games, but there's some good ones in there so let's get into it. All prices are from DraftKings but plays can be applied to any site.
Four-Player Stacks under $25,000
Boston – I'm really not sure what happened here with the pricing, but somehow the big guns from Boston fit into this category. A group that should probably be closer to $30,000 we can fit in the top three scoring threats of David Pastrnak ($7,000), Brad Marchand ($6,700), and Patrice Bergeron ($6,200) with the top defenseman of Charlie McAvoy ($5,000) for $24,900. If you want to save even more, you can swap one of those four out for Jake DeBrusk ($3,600) who's been skating on the top line and has nine points over the last six games. The Bruins will be playing the Blue Jackets tonight who are on a back-to-back and are coming off a tough overtime loss.
Edmonton – It's always nice when you're trying to be price conscious but still have a player like Connor McDavid ($8,900) in the mix like we do here. McDavid, Zach Hyman ($5,400), Warren Foegele ($2,600), and Darnell Nurse ($5,700) come in at a total price of $22,600, which allows plenty of room for filling out the rest of the lineup. Nurse in particular is at a good price considering Tyson Barrie left Thursday's game injured, meaning Nurse is likely to take over the majority of the top power-play minutes.
Nashville – The core trio of skaters you typically look at in Nashville are Filip Forsberg ($6,400), Matt Duchene ($5,100), and Roman Josi ($7,300) who have combined for 41 points over the Preds last 12 games. Mikael Granlund ($4,000) is oftentimes an afterthought with his lack of scoring compared to the other three; however, his price tag has come down so much he has entered value territory. Adding him in gives you a fully correlated four-player stack for just $22,800. Their opponent Saturday, San Jose, has allowed at least three goals in six of their last seven games.
Three-Player Stacks to Mix In
Montreal – One of the hottest teams in the league all of a sudden are the Canadiens thanks in part to the play of Nick Suzuki ($4,800) and his nine points over the past six games. Cole Caufield ($4,500) joins him on the top line and power-play unit and you can round out the stack with Brendan Gallagher ($3,100) or Josh Anderson ($3,400). When combined with one of the four-player stacks above, you're looking at a minimum of seven power play one skaters in your lineup which creates a lot of potential when things click.
San Jose – Timo Meier ($7,200) is averaging over a point per game in what has been a great season thus far for the Swiss-born player. Stack him with Tomas Hertl ($5,400) and Alexander Barabanov ($3,300) for an affordable top power play trio.
Vancouver – As the Canucks continue to try and keep their longshot playoff hopes alive, they've been getting solid production from the trio of J.T. Miller ($5,800), Brock Boeser ($4,600), and Elias Pettersson ($4,100). Against a Maple Leafs team who have been hemorrhaging goals of late, the price tags on the Vancouver forwards are worth including in some stacks.
The above six stacks can be mixed and matched together to create 4-3-1 lineups that have plenty of top power play exposure and have a high upside if things go your way. That lineup construction was the most prevalent among the winning lineups I reviewed.
Primary Three-Player Stacks
Nazem Kadri ($7,100), Mikko Rantanen ($6,900), Andre Burakovsky ($4,400)
Leon Draisaitl ($7,400), Evander Kane ($5,600), Zach Hyman ($5,400)
Elias Lindholm ($6,400), Johnny Gaudreau ($6,500), Matthew Tkachuk ($5,900)
Evgeny Kuznetsov ($5,300), Alexander Ovechkin ($7,700), T.J. Oshie ($3,700)
The above four stacks can be mixed and matched together to create 3-3-2 or 3-3-1-1 lineups that were the second most prevalent lineup construction among the winning lineups I reviewed. The "2" and "1-1" pieces of the lineup could be plugs from below.
Cheap Power Play 1 Plugs
C – Calle Jarnkrok ($3,200), Ryan Johansen ($3,500), Nicklas Backstrom ($3,800)
W – Marcus Johansson ($2,900), Barabanov ($3,300), Anderson ($3,400)
D – Chris Wideman ($2,500), Vince Dunn ($3,100), Rasmus Andersson ($4,800)
Goalie Picks
Juuse Saros ($7,900)
Jeremy Swayman ($8,000)
Vitek Vanecek ($8,200)
Jack Campbell ($8,100)
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!