DelcoDave

"Daily Fantasy Sports Hockey Strategist"

Lincoln, NE • United States •

Stanley Cup Finals Game 2 Draftkings Review

Stanley Cup Finals Game 2 Draftkings Review

The Lightning survived an early onslaught from the Canadiens and made the most of their opportunities to go up 2-0 in the series with a 3-1 win in Game 2. Tampa got goals from their not so usual suspects, Cirelli, Coleman and Palat tallied a goal a piece. Suzuki scored a power play goal for the Canadiens. Vasilevskiy was phenomenal again, stopping 42 of 43 shots and was once again the better goalie than Carey Price who surrendered 3 goals on 23 shots.

What did we want to happen: We emphasized how Killorn being out would open up opportunities for Tampa’s depth forwards and others in the top 6. Specifically we highlighted Anthony Cirelli having a chance to make an impact since he was already playing on the second line and was most likely to assume Killorn’s role on the top power play unit. Our second plan of attack focused on Carey Price taking over the game and carrying Montreal, and us, to victory.

What did happen: Well the Cirelli pick looked great early in the game when he opened the scoring, however that was about all that went right for us in game 2. We wanted Carey Price to carry his team to a 1-1 series tie with a dominant performance, it was Vasilevskiy though who put on a clinic, hitting the 35+ save bonus and pulling the Lightning to a 2-0 series lead. It’s going to be a running theme throughout this series of trying to predict which one of the Canadiens players will do the scoring, game 2 was Nick Suzuki’s game, scoring a goal and getting 9, NINE, shots on goal. Brendan Gallagher is a guy we highlighted to potentially lead the Canadiens in game 2, coming in leading the team in shot attempts and shots on goal in addition to being among the ice team leaders, Gallagher had all the usage stats that indicated a possible big game. But Gallagher uncharacteristically played only 11:51 finishing with just 1 shot and 1 block.

Where to make adjustments: The two biggest variables that will being changing from game 2 to game 3 are the series shifting to Montreal, allowing the Canadiens to make the last change and dictate the matchups and the return of Montreal interim head coach Dominique Ducharme. So far in this series our early prediction of the Canadiens being able to slow down Nikita Kucherov and Brayden Point has been pretty accurate, while they both have 3 points in the series they did the majority of their damage in one period (5 points), in the other five periods they combined for 1 point. Look for that to continue in Montreal, Ducharme will be able to send out his best defensive line, presumably the Danault line, against the Kucherov/Point line all game. Now if Vasilevskiy continues playing the way he’s been playing then it won’t matter if Montreal can slow down the Bolts because they won’t be able to score themselves, Vasilevskiy is putting the team on his back right now and playing out of his mind, kind of what we expected Carey Price to do. For game 3 I think it’s going to come down to the goalies again Price needs to find his game or the Canadiens are going to be on the brink of elimination after tonight.

I’ll have my game 3 preview of strategies in a few hours, stop back and check it out.