Fantasy Hockey Picks: DraftKings NHL Stars vs. Golden Knights Showdown Targets For September 8

We’ve reached Showdown season in NHL DFS on DraftKings, as the playoffs have progressed to the Conference Finals with the Eastern Conference and Western Conference alternating games throughout each series. Tonight’s DraftKings Showdown slate features Game 2 between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Dallas Stars, which follows Sunday’s Game 1 in which the Stars shut out the Golden Knights and won 1-0.

Set your DraftKings lineups here: NHL Showdown $35K Kick Save [$10K to 1st] (DAL vs. VGK)

Top Performers From the Last Game

With the Stars winning 1-0 in Game 1, the top DFS performers makes for an unusual list as the goalies ended up ahead of all of the skaters, with Anton Khudobin ($9,800) clearly being the essential piece to a winning lineup. We can also see here that the most popular players on the slate were the top scorers for the Golden Knights, including Shea Theodore ($10,000) and Max Pacioretty ($10,400). It seems plausible that these numbers will hold relatively steady for Game 2, but a slightly more highly owned Khudobin and slightly lower owned Knights team is probably a reasonable expectation given the results of the first game.

DraftKings Slate Strategy

Game 1 between the Golden Knights and the Stars was relatively uneventful, with only one total goal scored and only 25 shots on goal for each team. According to the metrics at evolving-hockey.com, the expected goals (factoring in shot location) only indicated a 2.1 to 1.5 edge for the Stars, so it’s not as if these teams were frequently missing the net from close range either. It’s not clear if we should expect a defensive-oriented series to progress, however, since both teams needed seven games to win in the previous round and both teams were far from rested for Sunday’s Game 1. So even with the likely more competent Robin Lehner ($11,400) in net in place of Marc-Andre Fleury ($11,200) for the Golden Knights, there’s still some reason to expect a decent amount of offense in Tuesday night’s Game 2.

Ownership on Showdown slates is generally a hard thing to pin down, but it does seem somewhat likely that the goaltenders end up a bit over-owned after Game 1 was so low scoring. Having said that, the top scorers on each team are likely to be popular as well, so the key may be to find a lower owned second or third line to stack in an attempt to find goal scoring from less popular players. Both of these teams are deep at forward, so there are definitely some options to consider for scoring from depth players.

Value Plays

Alex Tuch ($6,400), Paul Stastny ($5,600), Chandler Stephenson ($4,200), Nicolas Roy ($3,000)

The Knights shuffled their lines throughout Game 1 in an attempt to generate goal scoring, and while it didn’t work, it should should open up some opportunity for Game 2 with the line combinations likely being TBD. The Knights’ first line stayed together, but there was plenty of movement between lines two through four, and there are a few players there to consider depending on how the lines shake out in warmups prior to tonight’s game.

Alex Tuch, Paul Stastny, Chandler Stephenson, and Nicolas Roy are all potentially underpriced if they end up sharing ice time with prolific playmakers like Max Pacioretty ($10,400) or Mark Stone ($9,000), and any of those combinations figure to be lower owned as a group if the lines aren’t known until just before lock.

On the Stars’ side, Tyler Seguin ($8,600), Alexander Radulov ($7,600), and Jamie Benn ($8,200) are actually playing on three different lines, but surprisingly the highest owned Stars line in Game 1 was the line that contained none of them. Roope Hintz ($6,000), Denis Gurianov ($6,800), and Joel Kiviranta ($5,000) all came in around 15% owned, so if that holds for Game 2, it would probably be wise to try to full stack one of the other lines in an attempt to get some of the lower owned players.

Set your DraftKings lineups here: NHL Showdown $35K Kick Save [$10K to 1st] (DAL vs. VGK)

Put your knowledge to the test. Sign up for DraftKings and experience the game inside the game.

All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.