The NHL standings and other basic ways to sorting NHL franchises aren't quite as reflective of the fantasy realm as we need them to be.
They are at the bottom of the standings, so does that mean the San Jose Sharks, Chicago Blackhawks, Anaheim Ducks and Ottawa Senators are the best targets when choosing a free agent to stream against or deciding how to compose your lineup on a busy night? Should you avoid facing the New York Rangers and Boston Bruins because they are on top of the standings? What about the mushy middle?
A better assessment is to look at the actual fantasy points generated by opponents. I've been using fantasy points against per game (FPAPG) this season, but I want to break it down a step further. Rather than look at the grand total of fantasy points given up by each team and even rather than looking at the FPAPG by position, what if we broke it all the way down to top-six forwards or top defense pairing? That would give us a more focused look at how to target opposing teams with free-agent acquisitions.
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Top-six forwards
For this FPAPG, we've taken the top six forwards for each team in every game played by ice time. This means the six forwards selected for each team can vary by game depending on deployment. The idea being that the top six forwards in ice time each game should give a solid representation of a team's offensive focus, but it won't be perfect. An alternative would be to take the top six forwards by fantasy points scored, but that distribution ends up much less focused, so I prefer the ice time method.
So you can have a sense of how the forwards are distributed, here's an example of how the Tampa Bay Lightning forwards were used in the calculations.
Brayden Point: 37 games
Nikita Kucherov: 37 games
Brandon Hagel: 36 games
Anthony Cirelli: 35 games
Steven Stamkos: 34 games
Nicholas Paul: 33 games
Tyler Motte: 5 games
Tanner Jeannot: 4 games
Alex Barre-Boulet: 4 games
Luke Glendening: 2 games
Michael Eyssimont: 1 game
So, for the Lightning's 38 games played so far this season, Point and Kucherov have been among the top-six forwards for ice time in 37 games. Kucherov missed one game this season, so that's easy to explain. Point didn't crack the top-six forwards on Oct. 26 when the Lightning were already beating the Sharks 5-0 before the second period was half over. But these 228 box scores above (38 games times six players) are what go into calculating the opponents' FPAPG versus top-six forwards. Just as the same breakdown for other teams combined to create the Lightning's FPAPG versus top six forwards.
After taking all those box scores and combining them together, here is a list of which teams have given up the most fantasy points to opposing top-six forwards. I've divided the total FPAPG by six to give a digestible fantasy score as an average per top-six forward.
San Jose Sharks - 2.02 FPAPG
Ottawa Senators - 2.00 FPAPG
Montreal Canadiens - 1.96 FPAPG
New Jersey Devils - 1.95 FPAPG
New York Islanders - 1.92 FPAPG
Carolina Hurricanes - 1.88 FPAPG
Toronto Maple Leafs - 1.87 FPAPG
Columbus Blue Jackets - 1.85 FPAPG
Detroit Red Wings - 1.84 FPAPG
Chicago Blackhawks - 1.81 FPAPG
Edmonton Oilers - 1.80 FPAPG
Anaheim Ducks - 1.79 FPAPG
Minnesota Wild - 1.79 FPAPG
Tampa Bay Lightning - 1.76 FPAPG
Seattle Kraken - 1.72 FPAPG
Calgary Flames - 1.70 FPAPG
Washington Capitals - 1.69 FPAPG
Colorado Avalanche - 1.69 FPAPG
Nashville Predators - 1.67 FPAPG
Buffalo Sabres - 1.67 FPAPG
St. Louis Blues - 1.66 FPAPG
Pittsburgh Penguins - 1.66 FPAPG
Philadelphia Flyers - 1.64 FPAPG
Dallas Stars - 1.63 FPAPG
Vegas Golden Knights - 1.63 FPAPG
Boston Bruins - 1.62 FPAPG
Arizona Coyotes - 1.61 FPAPG
Florida Panthers - 1.61 FPAPG
Winnipeg Jets - 1.58 FPAPG
New York Rangers - 1.58 FPAPG
Vancouver Canucks - 1.47 FPAPG
Los Angeles Kings - 1.46 FPAPG
As you can see, this diverges significantly from the NHL standings. It's even pretty different from some other standard sorting such as goals-against per game. And there are a few surprises.
The Canadiens are a juicier fantasy matchup than most common statistics would suggest. And the Islanders aren't a top-of-mind team when it comes to better fantasy matchups, but here they are giving up 1.92 fantasy points per game to top-six forwards.
If we play with these stats a bit and ask, for example, which team has the best schedule between now and Jan. 14 for top-six forwards, the result will be the Toronto Maple Leafs. Sure enough, they play seven games (the max) between now and then, including two matchups with the Sharks, one with the Islanders and another with the Red Wings (Tuesday's date with the No. 32 ranked Kings notwithstanding). So perhaps now, more than ever, a trial run of Matthew Knies in your lineup is warranted. If he's not available and you like this line of thinking, the Winnipeg Jets have the next best schedule for top-six forwards, and Adam Lowry and Nino Niederreiter might be available.
Top-two defense
So let's do the same thing with defense using only the top two blue-liners in ice time each game. This yields a tighter field of qualified players, as often it's the same ones each game.
Here's the same breakdown of who is being used from the Lightning as an example.
Victor Hedman: 35 games
Mikhail Sergachev: 31 games
Darren Raddysh: 5 games
Erik Cernak: 4 games
Nick Perbix: 1 game
As you can see, there's only 10 total box scores of the 76 in play that don't come from Hedman or Sergachev.
Without further ado, here's the teams giving up the the most fantasy points against per game (FPAPG) to the top two opposing defenders.
New Jersey Devils - 2.26 FPAPG
Toronto Maple Leafs - 2.21 FPAPG
Ottawa Senators - 2.19 FPAPG
Columbus Blue Jackets - 2.14 FPAPG
Detroit Red Wings - 2.10 FPAPG
Edmonton Oilers - 2.10 FPAPG
Anaheim Ducks - 2.08 FPAPG
San Jose Sharks - 2.04 FPAPG
Colorado Avalanche - 2.04 FPAPG
Pittsburgh Penguins - 2.03 FPAPG
Seattle Kraken - 2.02 FPAPG
Calgary Flames - 2.02 FPAPG
Arizona Coyotes - 2.00 FPAPG
Tampa Bay Lightning - 1.98 FPAPG
Buffalo Sabres - 1.93 FPAPG
Nashville Predators - 1.92 FPAPG
Chicago Blackhawks - 1.90 FPAPG
Minnesota Wild - 1.90 FPAPG
Dallas Stars - 1.89 FPAPG
New York Islanders - 1.87 FPAPG
Carolina Hurricanes - 1.87 FPAPG
Montreal Canadiens - 1.84 FPAPG
Florida Panthers - 1.81 FPAPG
Vegas Golden Knights - 1.78 FPAPG
Los Angeles Kings - 1.78 FPAPG
New York Rangers - 1.76 FPAPG
Vancouver Canucks - 1.74 FPAPG
Winnipeg Jets - 1.72 FPAPG
Boston Bruins - 1.66 FPAPG
Washington Capitals - 1.64 FPAPG
St. Louis Blues - 1.44 FPAPG
Philadelphia Flyers - 1.44 FPAPG
There's even a bit more shock here, as the Devils and Leafs both show a weakness to attacks from the blue line. The Islanders and Hurricanes, meanwhile, do much better at limiting fantasy points from opposing D.
Running this same exercise through the schedule to Jan. 14 and we get a suggested list of defenders to consider as great short-term pickups. The Leafs have the best schedule again, so the time is right to try Timothy Liljegren in your lineup. The Flyers have the next best schedule for D, so Travis Sanheim (only available in about one-quarter of leagues) and Cam York (available in more than 90 percent of leagues) are options for your lineup.
Based on the FPAPG logic above and the schedule, here are some streaming/short-term recommendations for the rest of this week as well as Week 14 of the fantasy season. Let's see how these play out between now and Jan.
Tyler Bertuzzi, W, Toronto Maple Leafs (49.1% available)
Adam Lowry, C, Winnipeg Jets (96.0% available)
Nikolaj Ehlers, W, Winnipeg Jets (50.1% available)
Dakota Joshua, C, Vancouver Canucks (95.4% available)
Matt Duchene, C, Dallas Stars (41.5% available)
Sean Couturier, C, Philadelphia Flyers (29.0% available)
Joel Farabee, W, Philadelphia Flyers (78.4% available)
Alexis Lafreniere, W, New York Rangers (82.2% available)
Blake Coleman, C, Calgary Flames (68.4% available)
Philipp Kurashev, C, Chicago Blackhawks (95.0% available)
Pavel Zacha, C, Boston Bruins (76.1% available)
Dylan Strome, C, Washington Capitals (45.2% available)
Timothy Liljegren, D, Toronto Maple Leafs (95.9% available)
Neal Pionk, D, Winnipeg Jets (40.1% available)
Thomas Harley, D, Dallas Stars (71.8% available)
Cam York, D, Philadelphia Flyers (90.8% available)
K'Andre Miller, D, New York Rangers (36.5% available)
Seth Jones, D, Chicago Blackhawks (28.8% available)
Connor Murphy, D, Chicago Blackhawks (85.2% available)
Rasmus Sandin, D, Washington Capitals (82.2% available)