DFS Saturday: Considerations for Game 2, Including Goaltending
Stephen Dotzel
2023-05-20
As expected, we are down to just one game per day, or less, for the remainder of the NHL playoffs. Don't fret though, as the fantasy sites have a format for this occasion and will continue to post contests up until the final horn sounds on the 2022-2023 season. A unique format that I haven't had much time to try out yet is a two-game slate where, for example, they use Game 2 of the East Finals and then Game 2 of the West Finals. So, the contest takes two days to complete and uses the classic scoring we are used to during the season. This could be an option for those missing the standard nine-skater lineups.
As for this article, I am going to focus on the one-game contests that we touched on last week, specifically DraftKings. It's important to check the contest rules on the specific fantasy site you play on, as they vary slightly. If you want a quick rundown of how one game contest scoring works on DraftKings and some strategy when building lineups, please ready my article from last Saturday here.
For tonight's game, we have two teams that are probably wishing they had an extra day off considering they played into the wee hours of the morning Thursday into Friday, with four full overtime periods. When something like that happens in single-game contests, having both goalies rostered is a MUST because once it was all said and done Sergei Bobrovsky had 63 saves and Frederik Andersen 57. That's an insane amount of fantasy points and something a forward player cannot come close to matching in a low scoring game. It will be interesting to see if both those goalies are back in net on Saturday, given they played more than two full games worth of minutes, or if either team opts to give their netminder the extra few days to recover. I'd have to imagine considering how well both played, each will be back in net on Saturday.
Captain Considerations
I'm going to build my lineup around the idea of Carolina bouncing back and coming away with a win in Game 2. With that as my build, I'm going to lock in Andersen ($16,200), or whoever is in net for the Canes, as my captain. The possibility of 30+ saves plus a win gives us the safest source of fantasy points in a Carolina win, as trying to identify who exactly will score the goals is much more difficult.
Flex Considerations
I'm not going to overthink this from the Carolina perspective, the top three point producers during the playoffs have been Sebastian Aho ($9,800) with 11 points, Seth Jarvis ($8,000) with ten, and surprisingly Jordan Martinook ($5,800) also with ten. I'm going to pencil those skaters in.
After rostering the above along with Andersen we have two spots left in our lineup, one of which must be filled by a Panther, and we have $10,200 in salary left to spend. Some options I'll consider here are Jesper Fast ($3,400), Jordan Staal ($4,400), and Anthony Duclair ($4,600) who all have eight points during the playoffs as well as Gustav Forsling ($5,600) who has a very respectable 9.4 DraftKings points per game average on the year. Any combination of those four players will fit into our lineups given the salary we have to work with.
Be sure to follow me on Twitter @SteveDotzel so you can follow my "DFS-NHL" list which is comprised of dozens of team accounts and beat writers providing important updates throughout the day. Also, give a look to our tools at DFS Central to see who our formulas are liking for this slate. Best of luck with your lineups!