Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver.

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Welcome to the NHL Hat Trick. I don't know how the rest of you fared, but last night wasn't great. I ran 22 lineups in the main slate with a couple to sweat, but for the most part, they were a bit of a letdown.

For today's issue, I'm going to break down how I construct lineups for cash and GPP contests in DraftKings (FanDuel to come later). If you read my strategy guide (linked above) you should have a decent understanding of what to look for when building your player pool. Here, I'll go over how I put it all together. *Keep in mind this is my method. Sometimes I win. Sometimes I lose.

With that, here's my cash lineup from last night:

Let's talk about how I got there. TB1 was one of my favorite stacks, so I started with Point, Stamkos, and Palat. Now you might be wondering why Pettersson and Boeser. I've mentioned this before, but one of my favorite sorters in the LineStar app for NHL is the Skaters vs Opp Team (Last 20) --> FPPG to Line.

VAN1 was at the top of the ranking for that so I ran with Pettersson and Boeser. I only did a 2-man stack because I don't like to run 3-3 stacks (3 players from one team, 3 from another) in cash lineups. To me, that's just too risky. For the rest of my lineup, I ran Vasilevskiy at G because I wanted to correlate goalie with my 3-man Tampa stack. That didn't leave me much salary to work with, so I ran one-offs to fill the rest.

Generally, I like to look at teams that I think will score a lot and then pick one-offs from those teams. I expected COL to score a lot (SPOILER: they didn't) and PIT-PHI to be high scoring (it was), which is why I filled players from those teams.

Now, let's look at some of my GPP lineups:

My process for building GPP lineups is this:

1. Identify the teams that I like the most. This can be based on Vegas implied totals, matchup, homerism, etc.

2. Start with the favorite and pick a stack of forwards (C-W-W or C-C-W). Sometimes I prefer an even-strength line, but sometimes I might prefer 3 players from the power play unit.

3. Load those three into the builder and pick 3 forwards from another team that I really like. With this, I may not be able to fit the top line or my favorite stack from the second team. That's ok. You'll see above that I stacked TOR2 with TBL1 and it did really well. Think of it like baseball. The 1-4 hitters might be the "best" players and the ones you want to stack, but it could be the 5-7 hitters that go off. Don't be afraid to stack depth lines of teams you like.

4. Add a G that correlates with one of the stacks.

5. If salary allows, add a D that correlates with one of the stacks. Don't force it.

6. Fill the remaining D with the highest shots+blocks and minutes players you can fit.

7. Clone that lineup and repeat.

I mentioned this yesterday, but not much changes between morning skate and pre-game warmups (most of the time). I generally build lineups during my lunch. I prefer hand-building them this way than using an optimizer.

Hopefully, that helps. Hit me up if any of that doesn't make sense or if you have more questions.

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.

Cam Talbot - MIN (DK: $7900, FD: $7400) *CONFIRMED STARTER*

I'm trying not to overthink things this early in the season. Let's pick a goalie that's reasonably priced and *should* get the win tonight.

Center

Sebastian Aho - CAR (DK: $7100, FD: $7600)

Carolina has one of the highest implied totals of the night, which is why I'm going to have a lot of exposure to them in cash and GPP lineups. For me, it starts around having Aho in my lineups. With the matchup and ceiling, you are going to expect to have to spend up, but I'm expecting it to be worth it tonight.

Wing

Kirill Kaprizov - MIN (DK: $2900, FD: $4000)

Consider this your free square on the night. I've said that ownership for even the "chalk" isn't usually north of 25%, but even on tonight's 10-game slate, I'd expect significant ownership. Kaprizov is extremely talented and is expected to be on the top line and top powerplay unit for Minnesota tonight.

Defensemen

David Savard - CLS (DK: $3900, FD: $3800)

If you're going to spend up at center and wing, you're going to need to spend down somewhere, which is why Savard will be my go-to for tonight. He pretty much fits what I look for in a cheap(er) D - shoots the puck, blocks pucks, and is on the ice a lot.

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 power play unit. 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.

Charlie Coyle: BOS - C (DK: $4.1K, FD: $4.7K)

Alexis Lafrenière: NYR - W (DK: $3.7K, FD: $4.8K) 2020 #1 Draft Pick

Brett Pesce: CAR - D (DK: $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 NSH1. This line feels underpriced to me. This is typically a $18k-$20K stack that's under $15K. Koorpisalo isn't a great goalie, but he had a pretty good year last year with a GAA of 2.6 and a .911 Save%. Still, it's hard to find a fully correlated line at this price, so I'm going to dump this in a few lineups and hope for the best.

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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