3 NHL FanDuel Studs to Target on 9/3/20
Spending up in any daily fantasy lineup is how to get the superstars and the highest upside players in your lineup. In NHL DFS, it’s different from paying up in sports like NBA or NFL. Someone can be one of the highest-priced players at his position and put up a total dud of a performance, and paying that much for him would be a huge mistake. Let’s make sure we are paying up in the right spots when building our lineups tonight.
Two game sixes are taking place on Thursday, as both trailing teams forced another game with wins on Tuesday. Let's see which stars can help their teams and our fantasy lineups in these pivotal matchups.
Bo Horvat, Center, Vancouver Canucks
FanDuel Salary: $6,300
While most people are talking about Elias Pettersson as the Vancouver Canucks center, and rightfully so, Bo Horvat has gone overlooked for how good he has been in the postseason. Horvat is tied for the lead in goals in the playoffs with nine. Horvat's production over the past few seasons has also gone overlooked, as he has scored twenty goals in four straight seasons, including 27 in the 2018-19 season. Horvat has been getting shots on net in the bubble, with multiple shots on goals in 14 straight games.
Horvat has three goals in the Canucks' series against the Vegas Golden Knights. One of those goals came on the power play, which is a matchup advantage that Vancouver holds during this series. In the regular season, the Canucks had a top-five power-play in the NHL, while Vegas had a bottom-five penalty kill. Horvat was tied for sixth in the league in power-play goals with 12. He will likely be lower owned than his teammate Pettersson at the same position and is a good way to differentiate your lineups on a small slate.
Mark Stone, Wing, Vegas Golden Knights
FanDuel Salary: $7,800
Mark Stone gets a lot of love in the analytics community for how good of a player the advanced stats say he is. Turns out, he's also a pretty good fantasy player as well. He has 15 points in 13 postseason games, and his six goals are tied for the fourth-most. His .97 points per game during the regular season was the highest rate on the Golden Knights. In this series against the Canucks, Stone has seven points in five games, and could continue that on Thursday night.
The Golden Knights have been one of the most impressive teams since the bubbles opened. They've averaged 3.54 goals per game, the second-most for any team that made it to the first round of the playoffs. The daily fantasy matchup heat map tells us that their implied goal total in tonight's game is all the way up to 3.86. Stone is second in our projections for wingers, only behind teammate Max Pacioretty. You could play them together as they are on the same line and same power-play unit, and capture a lot of upside in the high implied team total that the Golden Knights have tonight.
Semyon Varlamov, Goalie, New York Islanders
FanDuel Salary: $7,900
Besides one complete dud earlier in this series, Semyon Varlamov has been a solid goaltender for the New York Islanders in the postseason. His win-loss record is 9-3, with one no-decision mixed in there. His .929 save percentage is tied for second for goalies still left in the playoffs. His matchup against the Philadelphia Flyers has been a pretty good one, and the odds say it should be good again. The Islanders are -140 favorites on .
The Flyers implied team total is 2.6, the lowest of the four teams playing today. This game has a 5.5 goal total, while the Vancouver-Vegas game has a 6.5 total. I'd rather have the goalie in the lower total game and Varlamov has a decent shot at getting the win, making him a solid play in net tonight.
Nicholas Vazquez is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Nicholas Vazquez also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username hbyanksman. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.
