Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

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Welcome to the NHL Hat Trick.

My internet has been out most of the day so I apologize for the brevity. Please hit me up in chat if you have any questions about the slate.

Tonight's Targets

Remember, we're still going off of 2020-2021 regular season data...

Goaltender

**Not all goaltenders have been confirmed as starters at the time of this writing**

There's been a lot of variance with goaltending so far this year. Just to give you an idea of how I've been approaching it is I've been spreading the love. If I'm playing 3 lineups, I'm doing a different goalie with each lineup

Still here are my two favorites on the night:

Carter Hart - PHI - (DK: $8000, FD: $8100)

John Gibson - ANH - (DK: $7300, FD: $6800)

Center

My favorite:

Sean Couturier - PHI (DK: $7100, FD: $6600)

Going to get a little bit different where I expect Matthews to be a popular choice.

Wing

My favorite:

William Nylander - TOR (DK: $6300, FD: $7200)

I definitely want some Toronto tonight. I'm not ready to buy in on Matthews, but I think Nylander is a really pivot. He still gets PP time with Matthews and gets EV time with Tavares, who is one of my favorite centers tonight.

Defensemen

My favorite:

Justin Faulk - STL (DK: $4900, FD: $4300)

Better value on FD, but I think I'm going to spend up on forward tonight, which means I'm going to need to spend down on defensemen. You could go Hanifin, but I have more confidence in the Blues scoring against the Yotes than I do with the Flames scoring against Anaheim.

If you take anything away from this, keep in mind that hockey is a high-variance sport. The top-ranked player in each category could be a great play or be a dud tonight. Going all-in on any player probably isn't a great move.

With DFS, I try to think of these things:

• Who makes the most sense to play?

• Where is the field leaning?

• Who has been the most consistent?

• Who has the most upside?

• Who will benefit me most if others are wrong?

Spending Down

Some people call these "value" plays or "salary savers", but these are players that I like for tonight that fit at the lowest salary tier. It could be they're playing on one of the top forward lines or it could be that they've been playing well, but these are my cheap calls for a skater to pick up a goal or assist.

My favorite:

Ondrej Kase - TOR (DK: $2700, FD: $3300)

If I'm going to spend down, let's spend down. At the same time, the Rangers give up a fair share of points to the opposing third line. Worth a shot.

Line Stacks

Line stacking is a common strategy in GPP. You’ll see a lot of winning lineups where players are stacked from the same forward lines or power play lines. DraftKings allows a maximum of 6 skaters from the same team (with skaters from at least 3 teams) and FanDuel allows a maximum of 4 skaters from one team. In tournaments, you'll often see 3-3 stacks (meaning 3 players from one team and 3 from another team), 4-3, and 3-3-2 stacks.

Here are my favorite stacks (ranked in order of preference) for tonight:

And the RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT stack... let's go with TOR2.

DO THE MATH

I want to take a minute to talk lineup construction. Often, I get questions in the chat on "how does this look?" For the record, I don't comment on players lineups. I don't know how these players are going to do. Instead, I want to talk about and think about lineup construction if you're tailing my rankings today.

Let's say you like who I had at C, W, G as I suggested. Your initial build might start like this:

Here's what's good so far:

• $5250/skater in salary left is great. Gives you a lot of flexibility.

• All skaters so far have power play time

What you should consider:

• Do you want to full stack TOR2 by swapping out Couturier and Kase and put in Tavares and Bunting (GPP - please don't do that in cash).

• Do you want to stick with it as is and correlate skaters with Couturier, Faulk, or Nylander?

• What type of contests are you playing? If I was playing cash or small field contests, I wouldn't stack as hard as I would in a large field GPP.

PLEASE give me feedback on this. If this section sucks, let me know. I'd love to know your thoughts if you use my rankings to build lineups and answer questions you have.

Keep in mind, these are MY favorites. You should all do your own research and you might (and probably should) disagree with me in some spots. Don't be afraid to go your own way.

Good luck today! Tag me in the LineStar Chat @ZeroInDenver if you have any questions or feedback. Follow me on Twitter @ZeroInDenver.

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