When trying to identify the best matchups as we build daily fantasy hockey lineups, we generally focus on the best team matchups. We tend to pick on teams like Buffalo, Edmonton or Toronto because a large majority of the players on those teams are below average possession players. That’s obviously a good strategy, but we can miss out on some good matchups when we immediately players that will be facing teams that are a bad matchup like Nashville or Boston. That’s because most teams don’t have above average possession players from top to bottom. Some do, like the Kings, but most don’t and can provide us with sneaky matchup plays that most daily players will ignore. That makes guys with a bad team matchup but a good individual matchup good targets in large tournaments. Good matchup, low ownership.

The teams I consider to be bad matchups are those who have a nice mix of above average possession numbers and good goaltending. That left me with 16 teams I consider to be a bad matchup for opposing skaters. I then eliminated the teams who have really good goaltending. Great goalies can certainly cover up bad possession skaters. That left me with ten teams that I consider to be a good matchup for opposing skaters who don’t have a goalie so good that I’d be hesitant to roster skaters facing them. From those ten teams I was looking for individual players with below average possession numbers. I was looking for at least two forwards that skate together on a top six line or a pair of defensemen that skate together in a top two pair.

As you might expect, I didn’t find a ton of players who fit that criteria; these are good teams after all. But I did find a top six forwards pair and a top two defense pair with below average possession numbers. I’d advise you consider who they’ll be matched up against each night when building your GPP rosters. I’ll go through each pair and tell you who they’re most likely to be matched up against in their home games. But when they’re on the road, you’ll have to look at game charts of their opponent to see what kind of matchups their opponent likes to generate at home. You can find those game charts on war-on-ice.com.

Detroit Red Wings

At even strength, the Wings have the second best Corsi for percentage of total this year, but since February 1 they’ve just been a very good, not elite, possession team. And they’re basically getting average goaltending recently, so they’re a bad matchup but not a complete stay away.

The worst possession players among their top forward linse and D pairs are their top D pair of Niklas Kronwall and Jonathan Ericsson. They’re not awful possession players by any mean, but they are definitely below average. In recent home games that pair has been matched up with the opposition’s top line as you might expect. They also tend to hit the ice with the Pavel Datsyuk line, but Datsyuk is out for a bit with an injury. I think they’ll still probably skate primarily with the second line now being centered by Riley Sheahan. That’s a good thing because the Henrik Zetterberg line is a tougher matchup with Dastyuk out.

Detroit is in Tampa tonight playing for the second night in a row, so the Steven Stamkos line might be worth paying up for. They play again on Sunday against St. Louis, so the David Backes line is worth a look.

Washington Capitals

The Caps are just a slightly above average possession team, but Braden Holtby makes up for that quite a bit. But Holtby isn’t so elite that I’ll stay away from the Caps no matter what. The top line with Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Ovechkin is unsurprisingly a good possession line, but their second and third lines don’t have a positive possession player on them.

The third line is worse than the second, so pick on them if the Caps are playing a deep offensive team with a usable third line. But the second line has two players who are definitely below average, Evgeny Kuznetsov and Curtis Glencross, and the third, Troy Brouwer, is slightly below average. They generally match up with the opposition’s second line at home, so you can use top six forwards against them.

The Caps are in Winnipeg on Saturday, and the Jets also tend to use their second line against the opposition’s second line. That makes Mark Scheifele, Blake Wheeler and Drew Stafford worth a look for GPPs.