DFS Friday: Avalanche Look To Close Series Against Tampa Bay
Stephen Dotzel
2022-06-24
With the Lightning facing elimination, there is a real possibility that the 2021-2022 NHL season ends tonight and with that, would spell the end of my DFS articles for the year. Would just like to take a quick moment to thank anyone who takes the time out of their day to read these columns and I hope I provided something along the way that helped you out at some point. A shout out to the Dobber Team as well for asking me back this season and editing these every week, these guys put in tons of work behind the scenes to help make the site as good as it can be.
Okay, enough of that. If this truly is the end of the line for this season, let's try and go out with a bang. In Wednesday's article while I correctly predicted the addition of Mikko Rantanen to the top line, Nathan MacKinnon scoring his first goal of the finals, and the final score being 3-2; that's where my luck ended and I whiffed on the four other goals and failed to find the money with my Showdown lineup. Tis the way it goes sometimes.
For tonight's picks, I'm once again going to focus on the Avalanche. I know the Lightning are a resilient bunch and nobody can seem to finish them off when given the chance BUT the way they lost Game 4 just might be too much to overcome. As a result, and to fit in as many of the big guns from Colorado as I can I'm going to take a risk with my captain spot and use Arrturi Lehkonen. Lehkonen hasn't scored since Game 1 however he actually got the most time with MacKinnon and Rantanen on Wednesday. That means he'll be on the ice with good company in this one and should be able to find a scoring chance or two. I'll be using MacKinnon and Rantanen in flex spots along with the Conn Smythe frontrunner Cale Makar.
My last two spots are likely going to come down to game time. If Brayden Point were to suit up, he is priced about $3,000-$4,000 cheaper than he would be if fully healthy which presents too good of a bargain to pass up, even if he's a little hampered. After penciling him in, I have enough for someone like Bowen Byram who's only accounted for one point this series but is seeing plenty of ice time.
If Point were to sit out, I'm going to shift to punting my Lightning player down to Jan Rutta who is minimum priced but could see a bump in usage if Erik Cernak were to miss. That leaves my last spot open to any of the three of Gabriel Landeskog, Nazek Kadri, or Valeri Nichushkin. I'm leaning Kadri but all three are viable options.
Best of luck with your lineups! 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!