Watching your daily fantasy goalie play every night is like smoking: It shaves 10 years off your life. Hanging on every piece of rubber directed toward the net at 100 miles per hour is equivalent to sucking down a pack of Marlboro Reds within an eight-hour work day. But enough about my sickness.
Ownership Effects
Ownership is the most important factor to take into account when building NHL lineups. Hockey is an extremely random sport. Even the sharpest minds are awful at projecting outcomes of hockey games on a nightly basis. That’s fine. We just need to use that randomness to our advantage. To that end, identifying factors that drive ownership in large tournaments is important.
Here’s goalie data I’ve gleaned from our Trends tool:
| Count | Exp. Point | Avg. Points | Plus/Minus | Consistency | Exp. Point | Ownership | Upside | |
| Goalies | 4277 | 4.60 | 4.56 | -0.04 | 49.8 | 4.60 | 6.8 | 9 |
| Home | 2147 | 4.61 | 4.67 | 0.06 | 51.8 | 4.61 | 9.0 | 9 |
| Road | 2130 | 4.59 | 4.46 | -0.13 | 47.7 | 4.59 | 4.7 | 8 |
| Dog | 2134 | 4.56 | 4.27 | -0.29 | 43.9 | 4.56 | 3.9 | 8 |
| Favorite | 2143 | 4.64 | 4.86 | 0.22 | 55.6 | 4.64 | 9.7 | 9 |
The differences in ownership based on the Home/Road and Favorite/Dog splits are large. We know whether a team is at home or on the road is factored into Vegas money lines so these splits aren’t independent of each other. Upside is relatively flat among the splits, but home and road goalies have a slight advantage.
Home vs. Vegas
Is it being at home or being a favorite that really drives ownership?
| Count | Exp. Point | Avg. Points | Plus/Minus | Consistency | Exp. Point | Ownership | Upside | |
| Road/Fav | 613 | 4.65 | 4.90 | 0.24 | 56.8 | 4.65 | 7.3 | 7 |
| Home/Dog | 617 | 4.54 | 4.23 | -0.31 | 43.6 | 4.54 | 4.5 | 8 |
| Home/Fav | 1530 | 4.63 | 4.84 | 0.21 | 55.2 | 4.63 | 10.6 | 9 |
| Road/Dog | 1517 | 4.57 | 4.28 | -0.28 | 44.0 | 4.57 | 3.7 | 9 |
Vegas status has historically correlated more with ownership than has game location. Being the favorite, whether at home or on the road, tends to result in elevated ownership, whereas home dogs have below-average ownership. And, unsurprisingly, road dogs have the lowest ownership of all four subgroups.
But here’s something that’s intriguing: On not even a third of the ownership, road dogs hit their Upside with the same frequency as home favorites. While they are likely unsafe in cash games, road dogs could make for phenomenal leverage plays in guaranteed prize pools.
Vegas Revisited
Not only does Vegas tell us who it likes and doesn’t like, but it also tells us how strongly it feels about each team. Via Trends, we can sort through favorites and dogs at the extremes, looking at the 10th, 15th, and 20th percentiles to see how lopsided Vegas lines have impacted goalie production.
| Count | Exp. Point | Avg. Points | Plus/Minus | Consistency | Exp. Point | Ownership | Upside | ML | |
| Top 20% Fav | 863 | 4.67 | 4.93 | 0.26 | 56.9 | 4.67 | 12.7 | 8 | -149 |
| Bottom 20% Dog | 859 | 4.53 | 4.17 | -0.36 | 40.4 | 4.53 | 2.5 | 10 | 135 |
| Top 15% Fav | 648 | 4.68 | 4.96 | 0.29 | 57.1 | 4.68 | 13.4 | 7 | -160 |
| Bottom 15% Dog | 650 | 4.52 | 4.29 | -0.23 | 40.9 | 4.52 | 2.4 | 12 | 144 |
| Top 10% Fav | 428 | 4.68 | 4.96 | 0.28 | 56.8 | 4.68 | 14.3 | 8 | -173 |
| Bottom 10% Dog | 438 | 4.51 | 4.35 | -0.16 | 42.7 | 4.51 | 2.1 | 12 | 155 |
As you can see, even with the negative Plus/Minus values big underdog goalies offer a ton of GPP value on account of their low ownership and high Upside. Not only do these goalies have 25 to 50 percent more Upside than their heavy favorite counterparts, but they also have ownership that is five to six times lower.
Wrapping It Up
Goals can be extremely random over short periods of time. When we’re looking for goalies who can win tournaments it could be ideal for us to be contrarian by targeting heavy underdogs, especially on the road. They’re cheaper because they’re expected to score fewer fantasy points, and they’re also likely to see an elevated number of shots on goal. If they’re on the positive side of variance and manage to keep opposing goal totals down, then they have the opportunity to rack up unexpectedly high fantasy totals.
On the flip side, favored goalies are more expensive, but they aren’t likely to face enough shots to post tournament-winning numbers and so they have lower Upside than we might expect. At the same time, they often win and thus secure enough points via the victory bonus to hit their salary-based expectations a majority of the time.
When setting GPP lineups we should target heavy underdog goalies likely to have low ownership and high shots on goal.
Just try to avoid watching them play.
