The NHL Conference Semifinals begin tonight and for these pair of Game 1 matchups between the Tampa Bay Lightning/Florida Panthers and St. Louis Blues/Colorado Avalanche, we've got tonight's NHL DFS slate for DraftKings, FanDuel, and Yahoo Fantasy!  When looking over today's NHL DFS projections, we are going to be building our core lineup around players like Nathan MacKinnon from the Colorado Avalanche and Andrei Vasilevskiy from the Tampa Bay Lightning. Don't forget to check out the NHL DFS lineup generator when building your winning lineups.

 

 

 

We should be in for a great series as the Battle of Florida kicks off today. Carter Verhague was a star for the Panthers in round one and we will find out this series if that was simply just a flash in the pan or if this is more of a coming-out party for him. As for the other Panthers, we have plenty of options to choose from and they all come in the price ranges. Aleksander Barkov should be a player worth targeting, at the high end of the price spectrum. He has six points in round one for the Panthers and should see the most ice time of all of their forwards.

Jonathan Huberdeau was largely contained in round one by the Capitals, which should keep his ownership numbers low, but the Panthers will need production from him if they are going to win this series, and I suspect it will be tough to keep a lid on him for long. Other players worth consideration on the Panthers include Claude Giroux, Sam Reinhart, Sam Bennett, and Anton Lundell. Each of those players is capable of having useful games.

For the Lightning, with Brayden Point being out things get simplified a bit. We know we can look to Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov at the top end, and it is expected that Anthony Cirelli will fill in Point’s spot in the lineup, which could make him a nice value early in this series. The other player we should keep an eye on here is to see who takes over Point’s spot on the powerplay. That spot should be a nice value as well as it could be either Corey Perry or Ondrej Palat. 

On defense, we saw Aaron Ekblad finish round one with a bang. He has points in four of his last five games but we have not seen the shot volume or blocked shots that we saw from him during the regular season. If you’re looking for value from the Panthers' back-end Ben Chiarot should be your primary target. His minutes went up as the last series went on, and with that, we started to see him block more shots. You can also look at someone like Brandon Montour as he could get you some points for cheap, but he can be hit and miss as he is only playing about 16 minutes each night. With the Lightning, it can be hard to pass up the upside of Victor Hedman. He is the most likely player tonight to hit all of DK’s bonuses which gives him a really high ceiling, Ryan McDonough is a solid value play with is blocked shots, and you can look at Mikhail Sergachev as well as he has upside with points and shots, but not a solid floor.

For Sergei Bobrovsky to hit value tonight, he will need to get the win. He hasn’t had a lot of banner games so far in these playoffs yet, so he comes with some risk, especially at his price. On the other hand, you are not going to need to pay a heavy price to get Andrei Vasilsvskiy, who will likely see more shots and as we saw in game seven against Toronto capable of stealing a game for the Lightning. 
 

 

 

 

The obvious place to start here is with Nathan MacKinnon. He was the best player on the Avs in the first round scoring five goals in four games and having no less than six shots in each of those games. We certainly saw production and some big games from Nazim Kadri, Mikko Rantanen, Gabriel Landeskog, and Andrei Burakovsky, but not on a consistent basis. With the exception of Burakovsky, all of those players have some exposure to MacKinnon, which puts them in play for a stack.

For the Blues, we saw Ryan O’Reilly score in every game in the first round except one, and he is priced in a way that should make it easy for you to get him into your lineup today. We also saw Vladimir Tarasenko finish the last series with a bang, scoring four goals in the last two games. The Blues have no shortage of forward options with David Perron having some big games in round one, and we have seen what Pavel Buchnevich, Brayden Schenn, and Jordan Kyrou can do in the past.

The defensive group is a real strength for the Avs. Cale Makar is one of the most exciting players in hockey, and he is capable of scoring and putting up points every night. Devon Toews is a great midpriced option who can get you points, as well as put up big shot numbers and block lots of shots, and you can even get value from Samuel Girard and Bowen Byram however they do play fewer minutes. If you want to play someone on the St. Louis blueline Justin Faulk is the best option, especially with Tory Krug out to start this series.

The goalie matchup in this series is going to be a key to whoever advances. Darcy Kuemper played well for the Avalanche before taking a stick to his face and having to leave, but we have also seen Jordan Binnington look like the goalie that won the Stanley Cup a few years back. He posted save percentages over 0.930 in the three games he played in and was a big reason why the Blues were able to beat out the Wild. Expect Binnington to see lots of work, so if he can get the win tonight he could be a difference-maker.

 


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