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Fantasy hockey luck index – Bruins, Kraken lines among luckiest in NHL

Fantasy hockey rankings - Impact of Vancouver Canucks' coaching change

It’s time for another check-in on how lines are stacking up in goals versus expected goals as tracked by MoneyPuck.

As of Sunday, there were 72 lines in the NHL that have played 150 minutes together at five-on-five this season. Some are still together, but some haven’t been together for some time and are no longer relevant.

For example, the line of Jonathan Huberdeau, Elias Lindholm and Tyler Toffoli has one of the greater differences between their goals and expected goals, but the Flames haven’t been using those three on a line together for weeks now.

Line consistency is tough to keep up all season. If a line had stayed together all season and put in 10 minutes at five-on-five per game, they would be well over 400 minutes together this season. But only three lines have crested that threshold: the top lines from the Dallas Stars and Tampa Bay Lightning and the third line from the Carolina Hurricanes. In fact, only 12 lines have even broken the 300-minute mark this season.

Our “lucky lines” are NHL trios with more goals than the expected goal formulas say they should have, while “troubled trios” are the lines with fewer goals than math says they should. Most of the stats are through to Jan. 22 (but some have been manually updated since then if relevant) and rely heavily on MoneyPuck.com, with some assists from EvolvingHockey.com.

Lucky lines

Andrei Kuzmenko, Elias Pettersson and Ilya Mikheyev, Vancouver Canucks (expected goals, 9.1; actual goals, 17): Interestingly, this line had only played a handful of games together since we last checked in on line expected goals in a column on Nov. 27 — 63 minutes together, to be exact. But fresh under the watchful eye of new bench boss Rick Tocchet, the trio was reunited on Tuesday in his debut. And guess what? They scored two goals, once again outpacing their expected goals total. It’s easy to see where the disparity comes from now, as Kuzmenko is riding a 25.6% shooting percentage that is tied for the league lead. We have no baseline for Kuzmenko’s shooting percentage, so maybe it’s for real. Either way, he’s available in 40% of leagues and on a top line under a new coach; he’s worth adding.

David Krejci, David Pastrnak and Pavel Zacha, Boston…

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