Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

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Happy Friday, and welcome to the NHL Hat Trick.

Four games on tap tonight. Slate STARTS AT 6 PM Eastern.

#FAKESTATS

I'm bringing back the slate chart. Remember, this looks at times over their last 10 regular-season games, going back to the 2020-2021 season.

I mentioned this in chat, but I often use this to look for mismatches (teams that give up a lot of shots facing teams that take a lot of shots) and spots where both teams have sub 50% CF%. Those teams include SJS, OTT, NYI, CLS, VAN, and CHI. So if you're looking for "sneaky" stacks, that's where I start.

Tonight's Targets

Goaltender

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

The options at goaltender are awful tonight.

This is a night that I'm going to correlate goalie with one of my stacks, but my two favorites tonight are:

*Mikko Koskinen - EDM (DK: $7700, FD: $7900)

Robin Lehner - VGK (DK: $7900, FD: $8100)

*Koskinen started last night. Left Wing Lock has him likely to start tonight.

Center

My favorite:

Tage Thompson - BUF (DK: $4300, FD: $4500)

He stands out for me as a cheap PP1 play that will allow you to fit any of my other top-ranked centers in the second C spot in your lineup.

Wing

My favorite:

Jonathan Marchessault - VGK (DK: $4600, FD: $6000)

I don't understand why he's so cheap. Edmonton gives up 43.4 DK points (48.7 FanDuel points) to the opposing first line, so give me all the pieces from VGK1.

Defensemen

My favorite:

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

I wrote him up last time he played and the same remains true. I love defensemen at this price point, especially with his shot volume and ice time.

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:

Craig Smith - BOS (DK: $3600, FD: $4200)

On smaller slates like this, one of my favorite strategies is to take a popular team, like Boston, and play the second (or third) line in hopes that they outscore the top line. Love Smith as a one-off as well.

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 BUF1.

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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