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.

I want to talk about something I've been doing more often this season that in years past. I've been taking the best player on the slate and slamming them into as many lineups as necessary. Take Leon Draisaitl for example. He's exceeded his projections 5 times this year and tends to exceed them by a large margin when he does.

Of course, NHL is a high-variance sport and he can and has dropped a donut, but I find it's been really helpful to have someone with such a high ceiling in as many of my lineups as possible.

Just wondering if any of you have been doing this and what you think about this approach.

Like earlier this week, the main slate locks a little later tonight at 8PM Eastern. If you're a multi-sport DFS player, that should make it less stressful in that you can fully focus on NBA before tackling NHL.

5-games tonight. Let's dive in.

Tonight's Slate

Here are the 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%. 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:

Juuse Saros - NSH (DK: $7200, FD: $7600)

It's just me, but I hate recommending Saros. However, he's played well so far this season. I have Vancouver projected at 2.7 goals tonight, but he should see a solid shot volume to make up for it.

Center

My favorite:

Pierre-Luc Dubois - WPG (DK: $6300, FD: $5500)

Favorite center tonight not named McDavid or Draisaitl

Wing

My favorite:

Alex Iafallo - LAK (DK: $5000, FD: $5300)

With a goal to get both McDavid and Draisaitl into my lineups, I need to find other spots to spend down. Iafallo has great shot volume and I have him personally projected at 8% ownership tonight.

Defensemen

My favorite:

Oliver Ekman-Larsson - VAN (DK: $4600, FD: $4300)

Again, spending down is the name of the game, but great volume out of OEL.

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:

Adrian Kempe - LAK (DK: $3500, FD: $4000)

Lets get weird and pair him with Iafallo.

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:

Look... I'm not trying to mislead anyone. EDM is going to be a popular stack tonight, but you shouldn't need me to tell you that. As always, I like to give options on who *I* like.

And the RISK IT FOR THE BISCUIT stack... let's go with ANH1

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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