NHL Return To Play: What You Need To Know About NHL DFS

The NHL returns on Aug. 1, and that means it’s time for some NHL DFS! This article will break down what you need to know before returning to NHL DFS on DraftKings and FanDuel. Our entire team is back for the rest of the NHL season with our usual Power Play articles, Top Stacks, cheatsheets, projections, data, tools and of course, the NHL DFS Strategy Show with Jake Hari.


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NHL Return To Play Plan

The NHL, unlike the NBA, decided to skip each team’s last 10-12 games and instead will go straight to the playoffs. However, the NHLPA and NHL expanded the playoffs from 16 to 24 teams, so we’ll be getting some extra playoff hockey, which I am certainly not complaining about. The 5-12 seeds in each conference will play in the qualifying round from Aug. 1 to Aug. 10. The four winners in each conference will then advance to play the top four seeds, and that will be considered the first round of the playoffs. While the qualifying round is going on, the 1-4 seeds in each conference will play a round-robin tournament to determine seeding for the first round of the playoffs. So, we know who’s playing who in the qualifying round, but it’s a bit up in the air after that.

NHL COVID-19 Testing & NHL Hub Cities

So far, just two players have tested positive for COVID-19 among the 2,618 tests. The players have yet to head to the NHL Hub Cities, which are both north of the border — Edmonton and Toronto, where they aren’t dealing with major coronavirus outbreaks. Players will arrive in their respective hub cities on July 26. NHL Public Relations will continue to update us on NHL COVID-19 test results throughout the remainder of the season.

NHL DFS Return: What Do We Need To Know?

Game Play

The actual on-ice product shouldn’t be that different, although there will be no fans. You have to expect some rust as players haven’t seen game action since March 11, but it’s hard to say which players are in game shape, so that’s something we’ll find out as we get to the qualifying round. Home ice advantage in NHL isn’t like other sports; in the NHL, there is a tangible benefit to being the home team. Home teams get the last change, meaning they get to choose the matchups during most dead pucks. Some coaches are good at this, while others don’t seem to care about getting advantageous matchups. Luckily, we know the home teams, so line matching won’t be too hard to figure out.

Schedule/Late Swap

The NHL is already a league in which we struggle to get quality news. Some teams’ beat writers are more consistent than others, but if you’d been playing NHL DFS, you know that late scratches happen, and making late swaps can be a nice edge. Each team will only get one media representative at each game, so there’s a real chance that we won’t get pre-game line rushes for some teams. However, the staggered start times of the qualifying round may actually be beneficial to NHL DFS fanatics. You’ll know (generally) where you sit in your contests throughout the day. When news rolls in, head to our hockey Slack chat or NHL Live Blog to see a summary of any changes, as well as recommendations on how to handle each piece of news.

DraftKings and FanDuel both posted their slate for Saturday, Aug. 1. They’re including all the games for the main slate to start. Those are 12-hour marathon slates for the first few days, with the first game starting in Toronto at 12 p.m. EST and the last game starting in Edmonton around 10:30 p.m. EST. Start times will be staggered throughout the day with only two arenas that are in different time zones. Here’s the schedule:

Lineup Construction

Leave yourself as many options as you can for later games. You should always do this, and Fantasy Cruncher will do this for you, but don’t play your early guys in the FLEX. If we get line rushes in a later game we weren’t expecting, in general, I would err on the side of swapping to the new line combos (in large-field tournaments), as you’re going to have a unique stack compared to most other players that don’t make the swap. Don’t throw out your normal NHL DFS strategy (unless it stinks), just be ready to adjust. When in doubt, use Lineup Study to look at what some of the top players are doing and see if it’s different than what they normally do.

Stacking

Full power play stacks are not usually in my sets of lineups for bigger slates, but in the qualifying round especially, it’s probably smart to mix them in for tournaments. Even-strength line rushes are going to be difficult to come by, but in general, we know four or five players that will be on a team’s top power play unit. An example of this is the Capitals. We know they’re rolling out Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, John Carlson and T.J. Oshie on their top power play unit almost every time. It’s not my favorite strategy on big slates because it can be very expensive to stack up 4-5 top power play guys, and often times these guys are split up at five-on-five. However, if there’s carnage on the slate — line changes, late scratches, etc. — you’re going to be in a decent spot capturing a couple goals from a team’s power play. Your lineup is still correlated, and you’re getting unique from a portion of the field (which has incorrect line combos, aka. essentially dead lineups).

Goalies

Goalies are always difficult to cover because of the wide range of outcomes, and on top of that, we often don’t know who is starting until pre-game skate. I’m going to try to focus on goalies that we know are playing (profound, I know) hours in advance in the majority of my lineups. On the other hand, there’s merit to playing a low-owned goalie (underdog or favorite), so one way to combat this is to put the higher-priced goalie (regardless of whether or not you think he’s getting the start) in your lineup and then late-swapping down to that goalie’s backup if we get word that a team is shaking things up. For example, Alex Stalock was having a nice season for the Wild, but he’s often priced $200 or so below Devan Dubnyk. If you put Stalock in your lineup and use up all your salary cap on DraftKings or FanDuel, you’re stuck if the starter ends up being Dubnyk. Put the more expensive guy in if you want to give yourself more options as the slate goes on.

If you are paying attention to news and can effectively late swap, you should be able to have success playing NHL DFS in these playoffs. Things will be different with no fans and even less news, but it makes it important to react to the news we do get. Let’s play hockey!


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Author
Jake Hari is the Director of NHL Content at Awesemo.com and contributes to the site's NHL and MLB coverage as a writer of the spotlight stacks articles and host of Strategy Videos and Livestreams. Jake has been dubbed "the Baseball Savant" thanks to his immense knowledge of MLB but he's achieved some of his best success as an innovator in the world of NHL DFS. You can contact Jake by emailing [email protected].

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