Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

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Welcome to the NHL Hat Trick.

Tonight we get the first FORSBERG TUESDAY of the 2021-2022 NHL season. You know what that means...

Tonight's Targets

Remember, *I'm* still going off of 2020-2021 regular season data...

Goaltender

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

I'm going to keep saying it. Spread the love. Heavy variance in goaltending so far. I PREFER to correlate goalies with one of my stacks, but if you're not, here are my two favorites on the night:

Jonathan Bernier - SEA - (DK: $7900, FD: $7700)

Craig Anderson - BUF - (DK: $7400, FD: $7600)

Center

My favorite:

Sam Bennett- PHI (DK: $4500, FD: $6300)

I'm going to live here until they raise his price.

Wing

My favorite:

Kirill Kaprizov - MIN (DK: $6200, FD: $7400)

The Jets give up a lot of fantasy points to the opposing top line.

Defensemen

My favorite:

Miro Heiskanen - DAL (DK: $4700, FD: $5900)

I've said this before, but I will always try to fit in PP1 defensemen that get over 23 minutes and slide in under $5K on DK and under $6K on FD.

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:

Kirby Dach - CHI (DK: $3300, FD: $5100)

Do the math. EZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Line Stacks

Before going further, let's make this clear:

You 👏 dont 👏 have 👏 to 👏 stack.

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 MIN1.

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:

• $5850/skater in salary left is great. Gives you a lot of flexibility. You could fit McDavid in, for example, and still have the salary to make a viable lineup.

• All skaters so far have power playtime

What you should consider:

• Naturally, my mind goes towards a FLA or MIN stack, but you don't have to.

• This is my preference, but I don't like punting at center. I'd rather run Dach with Patrick Kane, for example.

• 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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