While MLB DFS players will notice similarities with NHL DFS in terms of roster construction and stacking, there is an additional aspect to NHL stacking that makes it unique: the power play unit. Hockey is the only one of the four major North American sports where a penalized team is forced to compete with fewer players than they ordinarily have.

When taken in combination with the high-variance nature of an NHL game, it should become readily apparent how vital the power play is in terms of individual nightly performance. Consider the fact that every NHL game has a projected goal total of either 5 or 5.5; this makes the average team goal projection 2.62 goals per game.

Now do the math: we have 4 lines, 3 that would be considered possible candidates to have a goal-scorer on a particular night, in addition to 3 pairs of defensemen, of which maybe 3 at most could be in play to score a goal. We are taking 12 guys per team, on average, and allocating 2.62 goals per team; this comes out to a whopping 0.20 goals per player per night.

Obviously this is rough math in that a defenseman has a lower probability of scoring than a forward, and that the forwards on lines 1 and 2 will see the ice for more minutes than the forwards on line 3 over the course of the game. The fact remains, however, that there is not a lot of scoring to go around, so any research we can do beforehand that can offset some of that variance will pay off in the long-run.

With the knowledge that goals are very hard to come by in the 2015-2016 version of the NHL, where do we look for the most fertile ground? The answer lies within the power play units. Every team has 2 power play units, with the percentage of time on the ice between these 2 units varying from team to team.

The factor that makes the DFS stacking of power play teammates more difficult lies in the very nature of the power play unit. First, while there are teams that will roll out a power play unit of 3 forwards and 2 defensemen, there are just as many that will ice 4 forwards with 1 defenseman. In terms of positions, teams using the 4 forward, 1 defenseman approach generally tend to favor a 2nd center at the point.

Taking teams that roll out 3 forwards and 2 defensemen, many of them will mix and match guys; it is very common to see the 1st line winger playing on the top power play unit with a forward and center from line 2.

Same goes for the pair of defensemen – the skills that are most important in regular 5 on 5 play are drastically different than those for a power play situation, so it stands to reason the defense pairing will not match the regular 5 on 5 pairing.

How vital is it to spend time scoping out what players will comprise the power play units? Glad you asked. In the 2015-2016 NHL season, the league-wide power play scoring percentage currently lies at just under 19%. If we know that the average projected goal total per team per game is 2.62, this scoring total over 60 minutes comes out to 0.0436 goals per minute per team.

Another way to look at the math is that if you broke down the 60 minutes of game time into 30 two-minute power plays, the overall percentage would be 8.7% ((2.62 goals) / (30 two minute power plays)). But the full strength goal percentage gets worse once you remove the power play goals scored at the significantly higher rate than at even strength.

Let’s simplify this even further: there are an average of 0.58 power play goals scored per team this year per game and an average of 2.04 even strength goals for a total of 22% of the goals being on the power play. There are 3.10 power play opportunities on average per game. Even if you took every single power play as lasting the full 2 minutes, we have 6 minutes of power play time out of a 60-minute game. In other words, 22% of the goals are scored in 10% of the game time. And that’s how absolutely vital the power play units are to your DFS lineup.

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