Welcome to NHL DFS Man Advantage special All Star Game edition for the 2019 NHL All Star game being played in San Jose, California on Saturday night January 26th 2019. I am not going to break down my best plays, because well, it’s the All Star game and all these guys are great! I will break down each division team and give you I believe would be good plays to put together in your lineup to hopefully help you cash.
Looking over the lineups for each division 3 things stand out to me in building my NHL DFS lineups:
1 – The Atlantic division is STACKED! I know these team are all loaded but the Atlantic division seems to be leaps and bounds better than the rest. With 3 set of teammates on their roster it should help with the familiarity and make them click easier and early on in the game
2 – For me the Pacific division has the best goaltending duo of all 4 teams, while the Metropolitan has the worst combo of goalies
3 – Out of the 4 divisions the Central is the only one who has not won a game in the current format.
NHL DFS Pacific Division Breakdown:
As I mentioned above the Pacific division has the best goaltenders in Vegas starter Marc-Andre Fluery ($6,300) and, in my opinion, the best goalie in the league, John Gibson($6,100). I really like whoever plays the second half of this game, probably Gibson, because they will most likely get the win. That is also something you need to pay attention to, which goalie starts the second half for his team because that is who gets the win bonus points. As I mentioned above the Central team is winless in 3 attempts in this format, meanwhile the Pacific division is unbeaten in the first round and has won the final 2 out of 3 years.
With this game being held in San Jose the three Sharks, Brent Burns ($6,100), Joe Pavelski ($4,400) and Erik Karlsson ($4,800), are all in play and I will try to roster 2 of them. Players from the home team are generally trying to put on a show for the home fans and are also familiar with the ice surface. Another combo who should play together that I really like are Connor McDavid ($6,800) and his Oiler teammate Leon Draisaitl ($4,900).
As for the remaining members of the Pacific team Johnny Gaudreau ($6,600) is the best one-off play as one the best and hottest players at the break, also rookie sensation Elias Pettersson ($5,000) is in play especially if he is paired with Gaudreau.
NHL DFS Central Division Breakdown:
Next to the Atlantic division ( who I will get to next) the Central’s roster is my favorite and almost as loaded. We found out on Friday that it looks like Nathn MacKinnon will miss the game and I don’t believe a replacement has been named as of Friday night. Even without their team captain the Central is still a force and may finally break through and earn their first win. MacKinnon’s teammates form Colorado, Gabriel Landeskog ($5,800) and Mikko Rantanen ($6,300), are still the top stack from the Central for me. I like pairing them with Miro Heiskanen ($3,700) of the Stars as an inexpensive D man who will more than likely see some time with the duo as the Central team only has 2 dmen on their roster (unless another is added to replace MacKinnon.
Patrick Kane ($6,800) is the best one-off play from the Central team as he comes into the All Star break on an absolute tear! The other set of teammates on this team, Mark Scheifele ($5,600) and Blake Wheeler ($5,500), of Winnipeg is a slightly less expensive stack if you wanted to pay up for the Pacific or Atlantic stacks.
In net for the Central we get Pekka Rinne ($6,000) who comes in not playing is best hockey, but his “backup” is Devan Dubnyk ($5,700) comes in playing some of his best hockey, will most likely play the second half for the Central, and is also the cheapest goalie on the slate, so because of these factors he is my favorite goalie.
NHL DFS Atlantic Division Breakdown:
My pick to win the whole thing is the Atlantic division with their loaded forward lineup. At the top of their forward list is the Toronto duo of Auston Matthews ($6,700) and John Tavares ($6,400). These two are both playing at an incredibly high level, but pretty much everyone is on this slate, and they make for my favorite high-end stack as it is safe to assume they will see plenty of time together. If you don’t like the Toronto stack, don’t worry, there’s plenty more. Next is the Tampa stack of Steven Stamkos ($5,900) and Nikita Kucherov ($6,700). Like Matthews and Tavares these two don’t play together for Tampa but do play together on the power play so they are familiar with themselves and should also see plenty of time together tonight. Lastly for the Atlantic the Sabres combo of Jeff Skinner ($5,300) and Jack Eichel ($6,100) could be the lowest owned of all player on this team and could win you some big time cash if you use them since most people will be on the Toronto and Tampa stacks.
In net for the Atlantic will be Andrei Vasilevskiy ($6,500) and Jimmy Howard ($6,200). It will most likely be Vasilevskiy in net to star so that means Howard becomes the play for me, but I am not really looking to use him. With there being such little price difference between player prices I want to save as much as I can and I prefer Dubnyk who will save you $500 which could be a big difference tonight.
The remaining members of the Atlantic are also playable but I am not sure if I am going to be able to get up the price tag for David Pastrnak ($6,500) tonight. He is a great player and should get on the score sheet, but I think I would rather spend that kind of money on a Tavares or a Kucherov for my cash lineups, maybe in a GPP I would consider him though. Thomas Chabot ($5,100) is my preferred dman from the Atlantic tonight over Keith Yandle ($4,300)
NHL DFS Metropolitan Division Breakdown:
The last division to breakdown tonight is the Metro division which might be the “worst” team in San Jose this weekend. My top combo is the Penguins duo of Sidney Crosby ($6,200) and Kris Letang ($5,200).
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Besides the San Jose combo the only other Dman I would pay up for is Letang, none of the others seem worth the price in my opinion. If you are looking to pay down a little I like the value of the Blue Jacket combo of Seth Jones ($4,400) and Cam Atkinson ($6,000) as a good GPP stack.
I am not going to use either of the two goalies here tonight. Both Braden Holtby ($6,400) and Henrik Lunqvist ($5,800) are not playing well coming into the break, especially Holtby.
I really like Matthew Barzal ($4,400) in this game tonight, especially at this extremely low price. He is the kind of player who can win an MVP and go owned at less than 5% in cash and GPP games. I also like Sebastian Aho ($5,800) tonight as well especially if they let him play with Crosby or Barzal.
Please also checkout my Introduction to NASCAR DFS to get you ready for the NASCAR Season beginning on February 10 with the Daytona 500
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