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          Fantasy hockey streaming guide: Stack your positions against these teams

          Keep reading to see why Adam Lowry of the Winnipeg Jets should be in your lineups this week. Jonathan Kozub/NHLI via Getty Images
          • Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.comJan 2, 2024, 02:00 PM ET
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              Sean Allen is a fantasy analyst for ESPN.com. He was the 2008 and 2009 Fantasy Sports Writers Association Hockey Writer of the Year. You can tweet him @seanard.
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          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.

          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.

          1. San Jose Sharks - 2.02 FPAPG

          2. Ottawa Senators - 2.00 FPAPG

          3. Montreal Canadiens - 1.96 FPAPG

          4. New Jersey Devils - 1.95 FPAPG

          5. New York Islanders - 1.92 FPAPG

          6. Carolina Hurricanes - 1.88 FPAPG

          7. Toronto Maple Leafs - 1.87 FPAPG

          8. Columbus Blue Jackets - 1.85 FPAPG

          9. Detroit Red Wings - 1.84 FPAPG

          10. Chicago Blackhawks - 1.81 FPAPG

          11. Edmonton Oilers - 1.80 FPAPG

          12. Anaheim Ducks - 1.79 FPAPG

          13. Minnesota Wild - 1.79 FPAPG

          14. Tampa Bay Lightning - 1.76 FPAPG

          15. Seattle Kraken - 1.72 FPAPG

          16. Calgary Flames - 1.70 FPAPG

          17. Washington Capitals - 1.69 FPAPG

          18. Colorado Avalanche - 1.69 FPAPG

          19. Nashville Predators - 1.67 FPAPG

          20. Buffalo Sabres - 1.67 FPAPG

          21. St. Louis Blues - 1.66 FPAPG

          22. Pittsburgh Penguins - 1.66 FPAPG

          23. Philadelphia Flyers - 1.64 FPAPG

          24. Dallas Stars - 1.63 FPAPG

          25. Vegas Golden Knights - 1.63 FPAPG

          26. Boston Bruins - 1.62 FPAPG

          27. Arizona Coyotes - 1.61 FPAPG

          28. Florida Panthers - 1.61 FPAPG

          29. Winnipeg Jets - 1.58 FPAPG

          30. New York Rangers - 1.58 FPAPG

          31. Vancouver Canucks - 1.47 FPAPG

          32. 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.

          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.

          1. New Jersey Devils - 2.26 FPAPG

          2. Toronto Maple Leafs - 2.21 FPAPG

          3. Ottawa Senators - 2.19 FPAPG

          4. Columbus Blue Jackets - 2.14 FPAPG

          5. Detroit Red Wings - 2.10 FPAPG

          6. Edmonton Oilers - 2.10 FPAPG

          7. Anaheim Ducks - 2.08 FPAPG

          8. San Jose Sharks - 2.04 FPAPG

          9. Colorado Avalanche - 2.04 FPAPG

          10. Pittsburgh Penguins - 2.03 FPAPG

          11. Seattle Kraken - 2.02 FPAPG

          12. Calgary Flames - 2.02 FPAPG

          13. Arizona Coyotes - 2.00 FPAPG

          14. Tampa Bay Lightning - 1.98 FPAPG

          15. Buffalo Sabres - 1.93 FPAPG

          16. Nashville Predators - 1.92 FPAPG

          17. Chicago Blackhawks - 1.90 FPAPG

          18. Minnesota Wild - 1.90 FPAPG

          19. Dallas Stars - 1.89 FPAPG

          20. New York Islanders - 1.87 FPAPG

          21. Carolina Hurricanes - 1.87 FPAPG

          22. Montreal Canadiens - 1.84 FPAPG

          23. Florida Panthers - 1.81 FPAPG

          24. Vegas Golden Knights - 1.78 FPAPG

          25. Los Angeles Kings - 1.78 FPAPG

          26. New York Rangers - 1.76 FPAPG

          27. Vancouver Canucks - 1.74 FPAPG

          28. Winnipeg Jets - 1.72 FPAPG

          29. Boston Bruins - 1.66 FPAPG

          30. Washington Capitals - 1.64 FPAPG

          31. St. Louis Blues - 1.44 FPAPG

          32. 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.