Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

Check out the NHL Season Preview & Strategy Guide

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Welcome to the NHL Hat Trick. NHL is finally back.

I'm excited to see some familiar faces in chat already, and I'm looking forward to seeing new faces, as well as some of the regulars from other sports, give NHL a try.

I'm going to get this out of the way. NHL is one of my favorite sports, but it can be a really frustrating sport for DFS. For starters, one of the first things you'll notice is that the contest selection and payouts aren't nearly at the level of NFL, NBA, or MLB. Comparatively speaking, I like to think that I'm playing NHL for lunch money. Also, it can be a slow sport in terms of fantasy points being accumulated. Don't be surprised if a good amount of time can elapse and your score and place in the leaderboard hasn't changed. However, NHL DFS is great in that goals can increase your position dramatically. There have been numerous occasions where a couple late goals have moved me from just outside of the pay line to solid cash.

Even with all the Debbie Downer talk, I'm excited for this season. Overall, my goal is to help you all get better at building lineups using the tools LineStar offers. If stuff doesn't make sense in the newsletter (or I have typos) let me know. With that said...

LETTTTTTTTTTTTTTTSSSSSSSSSGOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

Morning Skate

One question I see the most from people new to NHL DFS is "when do lineups come out? " To put it simply, they don't. Instead, most teams conduct a "morning skate" where teams take the ice for 30 minutes or so in the morning to run drills and get loose for that evening's game. Beat writers often attend morning skates and take note of line rushes and may get a chance to interview coaches. From that, we get a pretty good idea of what goalie is starting that night and what lines players will be on.

In other words, you can set your DFS lineups early. I typically build and set my lineups around lunchtime.

However, I would absolutely encourage you to pay attention to the chat or Twitter in the 30-minute period before each game starts to make sure there are no late scratches or changes.

Tonight's Targets

If you remember last year, I had a lot of fancy graphs that I used to rank players at each position where you could get a visual indication of how they match up. That's coming, but I need some data. So for the next two weeks, I'm going to give you insight into who I'm targeting in my lineups.

Goaltender

My general philosophy with goaltenders is this: I want to correlate my goalie with one of my stacks. The thinking behind this is if my stack does well, it's likely that my goaltender is in a good spot to pick up the coveted win bonus.

Philipp Grubauer - COL (DK: $8200, FD: $8400) *CONFIRMED STARTER*

As I write this, Colorado is a pretty solid favorite. I don't think you need to overthink this one. The top line for Colorado should be a popular stack, and you'll see a lot of Grubauer paired with those stacks.

Center

Connor McDavid - VGK (DK: $8400, FD: $8800)

For me, my lineups are going to have McDavid, MacKinnon, or Matthews in everyone. If I have to pick one of those three, I'm going with McDavid as I simply like his matchup most of those three.

Wing

Ondrej Palat - TB (DK: $6000, FD: $5500)

I'm definitely going to want a piece of Tampa in my lineups, and if I'm putting a top-tier center, I'm not going to be able to fit Stamkos. I like Palat. He shoots the puck and gets top power play unit minutes as well.

Defensemen

Alexander Edler - VAN (DK: $5800, FD: $4300)

Legit one of my favorite defensemen to play OF ALL TIME. Shoots the puck, blocks the puck, stays on the ice for a long time, and gets power play time. He's a much better value on FanDuel, but I'm going to try to squeeze him in DraftKings lineups as well.

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?

Bottom of the Barrel

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.

JT Compher: COL - C (DK: $3.3K, FD: $4.2K)

Mike Hoffman: STL - W (DK: $3.2K) DK ONLY

Joel Armia: MON - W (DK: $3800, FD: $4300)

Ryan Graves: COL - D (DK: $4.3K, FD: $3.8K)

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 for tonight:

And the RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT stack... let's go with CHI1. This is a pretty contrarian stack in that Vasilevskiy should go fairly well-owned tonight and is one of the most talented goaltenders in the league. That said, this stack is priced right and I can fit it comfortably with some of my favorite stacks on the slate.

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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