Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

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Welcome to the NHL Hat Trick.

I hope NHL DFS has been treating you well.

6-games on tap for tonight. I'm not going to mention Washington much tonight because I feel that's an obvious play. Arizona is giving up 4.4 goals a game over their last 10 regular-season games. I wouldn't talk you off of them, but there's a lot of other spots to like too. Let's take a look:

Tonight's Slate

Here's team numbers for tonight's slate. 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 CLS and NYR. 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**

My preference is to correlate goalie with one of my stacks, but my favorite tonight is:

Elvis Merzlikins - CLS (DK: $7600, FD: $7400)

Elvis ranks highest for me tonight and is priced in that sweet spot that I like to spend at goalie.

Center

My favorite:

Sebastian Aho - CAR (DK: $7400, FD: $8700)

I have Kuznetsov projected at the highest-owned center tonight. If you want to pivot, I recommend spending UP to get Aho.

Wing

My favorite:

Alex Ovechkin - WAS (DK: $8500, FD: $9400)

Each night, I look for a player that I could confidently lock in to all my lineups. It's McDavid most nights, but for tonight, it's Ovechkin for me.

Defensemen

My favorite:

Miro Heiskanen - DAL (DK: $6200, FD: $6400)

His price has been creeping up for good reason. Still a good option if you're spending up on defensemen tonight.

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:

Nino Niederreiter - CAR (DK: $3700, FD: $4300)

Like him as a one-off but love him in a CAR3 stack if you're feeling nasty.

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 VGK1.

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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