The NHL Stanley Cup playoffs start tonight, and if you’re playing DFS Hockey this evening we have you covered at eDraft.com. Tonight the quest for Lord Stanley’s Cup begins with 16 teams qualifying, and eight of them in action tonight. This will be the case throughout the first round of the playoffs with four games per night until teams start getting eliminated.

The first round of the playoffs are arguably the best two weeks of the whole year for hockey fans with a lot of great action every night. Teams definitely try to tighten things up defensively in the playoffs and limit their opponents’ scoring chances. This does make things a bit more difficult for playing daily fantasy hockey and deciding which teams and players to target. That said, playoff scoring in the NHL last year was actually higher than the regular season (5.59 goals per game to 5.34 goals per game), so there are definitely ways to build a winning DFS lineup of players that will score, and these articles will help with that.

DFS Hockey Analysis – NYI @ WAS

This could be the highest scoring game of the night, neither goaltender is a strong play (although “anything goes” for tournaments, tonight and throughout the playoffs)

Washington had the #1 power play since the all-star break (Islanders ranked #16). For penalty kill in that period, Washington ranked #9 and the Islanders #11

The New York Islanders ranked 6th for Corsi % (shots attempted) at 52.7%, while Washington ranked 14th at 51.4 percent.

Alex Ovechkin had four goals in the four goals against the Islanders and he’s a “big game” player. He will be a popular DFS player tonight, but fade him at your own risk

CAPITALS STACK – top power play unit: Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom, Troy Brouwer, Marcus Johansson, John Carlson

CAPITALS VALUE PLAYS (for DFS tonight): Joel Ward and Evgeny Kuznetsov

ISLANDERS STACK – top power play unit: John Tavares, Kyle Okposo, Anders Lee, Nick Leddy, Ryan Strome

ISLANDERS VALUE PLAYS (for DFS tonight): Nikolai Kulemin, Ryan Strome, Brock Nelson, Lubomir Visnovsky