Daily Fantasy Hockey

Picking a goalie is the best place to start, as they are usually the most expensive, and are somewhat the glue to your lineup. If you play daily fantasy baseball, think of them as your pitcher. We want a definite win, and we want them to hold the other team in check. Vegas is a great place to find teams that are favored, and also goalies where the opposing teams have low goal totals. This is not a position to get cute at in cash games, but in tournaments you can try and find value, or go contrarian. Goalies get nights off too, so verify your goaltender is between the pipes.

Vegas once again comes into play, as we look for those high scoring teams to narrow down our offensive selections. This is a good jumpstart to lineup construction, before taking a gander at team's lines. We want players with heavy ice time, and who are preferably on the power play lines. A combination of the two enhances scoring opportunities, which means more points and possible points for your lineups. The top two lines of teams is the best place to find your offensive weapons. They generally are the most skilled players, and see the most time on the ice. On occasion we see players jump up into the top two lines, and they standout as a possible value play that night. Lines are not set in stone, with injuries, under-performers, and coaches just mixing things up, lines change often. Staying on top of those things gives you an edge compared to the average player.

Defense is not the sexy position in hockey, but still plays a part in daily fantasy. There are plenty of offensive minded defenseman in the league, but the sites know who they are, and price them up. There are a few strategies to deploying defenseman, which is to go value at both, mix one value one high priced stud, or go two high priced options. Generally we like paying up for the skill positions, but often we can find value defenseman on the power play, which is where we like to start anyway.

Another big part of fantasy sports is stacking. In hockey, that is no different, and actually could be one of the bigger sports where it is encouraged. If Jonathan Toews scores a power play goal, we would also like to have Patrick Sharp in the same lineup, who just got the power play assist. We are increasing the ceiling of our lineup when stacking. Checking lines, and finding line-mates can pay off when stacking. Once again look for the top two lines, and power play lines, both can pay off big time when nailing the correct stack.

There are a lot of advanced stats in the sports world, and we are finally breaking into using them to measure a player's worth. Hockey is no different, and we can use this info to thrive in daily fantasy hockey.

Corsi Rating - The Corsi Rating measures shots for versus shots against when a player is on the ice. Shot differential is a better grading system, compared to just goal differential.

Fenwick Rating - This is the same things as Corsi, except it takes out blocked shots. This is generally used for rating teams, and not individual players.

Zone Start Percentage - The percentage of times a player starts his shift in the offensive zone versus the neutral zone. Players who start a majority in the offensive zone, tend to score more points and have better Corsi ratings than those who do not.

PDO - Team shooting percentage plus save percentage when a given player or players are on the ice. This ties into how lucky, or unlucky players are based on players around the. This tends focus in on players who are bailed out by good line-mates, or goaltenders, and vice versa.

While all these are a lot to grasp at once, they can give you a significant edge from the field. Using these stats is like going deeper into a player's performance than just looking at goals and assists - Equivalent to just looking at a pitcher's ERA in baseball. Advanced stats can help predict game flow, and those hidden gems to set yourself apart from those GPP fields. These stats will be used in our cafe articles, to help give you an edge this season.