Instead of looking at the different games tonight, I am going to go through my cash game line up build. I play on FD, but do look at Dk pricing as well in helping make my decisions.
Firstly, I went through each game making notes on paper. This included stats such as their record and goals for and against this season, as well the O/U and the Implied Team Total ( ITT) for each team. Then, getting information from the DFS Army NHL Research Station, I started making notes on which players were performing well, what their FD and DK prices were, and what kind of average fantasy points they have been putting up. In building my line ups I always try to follow the “bottom up” theory, which means instead of grabbing all the studs I want, then trying to find a punt that fits my left over cash, I look for those value play guys that will allow me to have lots of cash left over at the end to plug studs into my line up. The exception to this is I often start with a goalie, then the value guys.
Goalie never seems to be easy for me. Without looking at actual stats, it feels like if there is a goalie in a great position and I use him, it throws a curse upon them. Having said that I do know its not all the time, but my memory bias does affect me so I do have to be aware and try and not write someone off just cause they were a -300 favorite and burned me before.
Tonight really seems to come down to Holtby ( -305) ( Washington) and Gibson ( -162)( Anaheim) are the two biggest favorites on the slate. St. Louis at Montreal and Boston at Calgary are closer to pick’ems and feel more like GPP plays. ON FD Holtby is a whopping 9100 because of those high odds. But he has a GAA north of 3 and a save percentage south of .900. Neither of which make me feel that comfortable starting him in cash. While the NYR aren’t scoring much, this feels like a chance for them to pot some goals. Anaheim Faces the NYI, who also are not scoring, and Anaheim has the best team GAA on the slate, so I will pocket the $500 difference and go with Gibson.
Next I went to Defense. Three players stood out to me on D, because they all have double digit FD point production backed up with decent floors based on shots on goal and blocked shots( SHOGBS). First was Carlson ( Was) with a floor of 4.76 SOGBS and an avg over 15 FD pts per game. Also on my list were Petry( MTL) ( 3.31 SOGBS 10.55 FDP/G) and Pulock(NYI) ( 3.91 SOGBS and 10.53 FDP/G). Given their FD Pricing ( Carlson 6200, Petry 4300 and Pullock 3900) I decided to start with the 2 lower priced ones and use that savings at forward. I know I have Pullock going against Gibson, but its a calculated risk given a small slate and most of Pullock’s scoring coming from SOGBS.
For the remainder of my slots ( Centres and Wings) i started with lower cost guys from middling offenses who have upside. O’Reilly from St Louis at $5900 is averaging 13.32 FDP/G. This is a great value place to start. Next up I went to Tatar from Montreal. He is $4600, and only has 8.52FDP/G on average, but Montreal is in a good spot. I then grabbed a stud in Pasternak ( $7900). He is the cheapest of BOS1 today, but is right up there with an average of 18.09 FDP/G.
I really want a piece of the Washington offense tonight as they have the highest ITT by a long way. I started by adding Stephennson ( $3300) who is really a pure punt, but gives us exposure to Ovi and Kuznetsov on Wash1. At this point I still need 1 center and 1 wing, with an average of $8250 to spend on them. By doing this bottom up build having this much to spend leaves me with great options. I took a look at Bergeron here ( $8200) but as I did I spied Stephenson, who while he wont take much to hit value, was feeling a little too GPP for me. I could have fit all of BOS1 in at this point, but again that felt too GPP. I dropped down to Kuznetsov for $7400. This leaves me 9100 which means i can fit in anyone I want on the wing. The two options that jumped out were Marchand and Ovechkin. Either one will fit, and provides correlation with either Kuznetsov or Pasternak. But if I take Ovi I have all of Wash1 in play, which again feels too GPP. I decided to take Ovi and get rid of Stepenson. This put me back in the non bottom up build problem of looking for that cheap punt to fill the lineup. But i very quickly took a look at Ana and found Comtois. He has 5 pts in 6 games playing on Ana 1 and PP2. This will give me exposure on the cheap to Rackell and Silferberg who are more highly projected.
At this point I have a line up that is giving me exposure to 4 of the top 5 projected offenses, with a double dip into the Washington as the highest. Where I went with a lower projected offense its for a player who is representing really good value. My normal process is to enter this into the contests I want, then let it simmer for awhile and come back to it later for another look. One of the questions I have still is about having too many one offs versus having more correlation. While Kuz and Ovi correlate nicely, Petry and Tatar do correlate, but they have a much lower ITT that worries me.