Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver

Welcome back to the NHL Hat Trick.

After a terrible week last week for DFS slates, we get a pretty decent week this week. Today has a lot of my favorite top sixes to play any given night, so I'm not going to worry too much about ownership, but just going to play who I like.

If you missed last week, I'm going to keep including this overall matrix of the slate from a high level. These are team numbers over the past 10 games. Starred numbers are the 90th percentile or above on the slate. From left to right, I'm looking at wins and losses, corsi for and against, high danger corsi for and against, shots for and against, team save percentage, shots on target (percentage of shot attempts that end up on net, shooting percentage (shots on net that end up as goals), scoring chances for and against, PDO (basically luck) and goals for and against.

Again, let me know if you find this useful or not.

Pittsburgh and New Jersey were duds last time out, but that's not going to stop me from playing the top line again for each tonight. I like Pittsburgh a little more with the home matchup, but I never feel good about starting Matt Murray either, so I'll probably have some NJD1 exposure as well.

That aside, let's look into who else I like on the slate:

Goaltending

Playing cash games? Fill in your goalie spot first. Playing tournaments? Fill your skater positions and pick the goaltender with the biggest upside for the least amount of salary. Here are my three favorite goaltenders on the night:

Thomas Greiss, NYI (vs MON) (DK: $7.9K, FD: $7.5K)

Greiss has been outstanding over the past month and has a lot of potential upside tonight against a Montreal team that is averaging 32 shots on net a game. I like his pricing more on FanDuel, but will have plenty of shares on DraftKings as well tonight.

Anton Khudobin, DAL (@ BOS) (DK: $7.2K, FD: $7.6K)

I think Dallas and Boston could be a low-scoring game with a lot of shots, which is why I have interest in both goalies tonight. Khudobin has been decent, and if you have to spend down at goalie, you could do worse, with less potential upside.

Tuukka Rask, BOS (vs DAL) (DK: $7.7K FD: $8.2K)

Tuukka Rask is my Dallas Keuchel in hockey. I never seem to get him right, but I think he's priced right. He has a fairly tough matchup against Dallas at home and has done well against Dallas in the past that I'm going to let him make or break some lineups for me tonight.

#BiscuitInTheBasketWatchList 🚨

For those of you who aren’t familiar with hockey, “biscuit in the basket” is a term for scoring a goal. Here I’m going to give a center, wing, and defensemen for the top and value pricing tiers that I think has a good chance to score a goal. Remember - I gave some tips last week on numbers that I look for, and these players check most (if not all my boxes):

Sidney Crosby: PIT - C (DK: $6.7K, FD: $9.1K)

Crosby is almost a steal tonight at $6700 on DraftKings. New Jersey has been giving up 3.28 goals a game over the past 10 games and I'm a member of the "Crosby at home" club.

Alex Ovechkin: WAS - LW (DK: $7.7K, FD: $8.9K)

Ovechkin is averaging 4 shots on net a game and gets a good matchup against an Edmonton team that is second worst on the slate on the penalty kill at 73.2%

David Pastrnak: BOS - RW (DK: $7.2K, FD: $8.3K)

Pastrnak is such a great player with a huge ceiling that I've been rostering him almost every game.

John Klingberg: DAL - D (DK: $5.8K, FD: $6.6K)

With so many top tier forwards on the slate, it's going to be difficult to fit a top tier defensemen, which is why I like Klingberg tonight, mostly for the price and floor.

Value Sticks 💲

Similar to the biscuit-in-the-basket watch list, in this section I’ll provide a center, wing, and defensemen who are priced in the value tier. If I can find someone under priced on both sites, I’ll highlight them. But in some cases, it could be site specific.

Leon Draisaitl: EDM - C (DK: $5.3K, FD: $6.4K)

Draisaitl has been seeing 3.4 scoring chances a game with a respectable 57% CF% and has been putting 2.8 shots on net a game.

Clayton Keller: ARI - LW (DK: $5.5K, FD: $6K)

Keller is on the top line and top powerplay unit for Arizona. The risk is that he doesn't take a lot of shots, but he's a playmaker and could tickle the twine if he gets some room to skate.

Joel Armia: MON - RW (DK: $4.3K, FD: $3.7K)

Armia sits on the top powerplay unit for Montreal and has been putting almost 3 shots on net over the past 5 games.

Esa Lindell: DAL - D (DK: $4.2K, FD: $4.1K)

The defense value God, averaging 2.8 shots on net and 1.6 blocks a game.

Bottom of the Barrel

I did this last season, and I’ll do it again this season. These are the players in the bottom of the salary barrel but are in a good spot tonight.

Jordan Weal: PHI - C (DK: $3.4K, FD: $3.6K)

Miles Wood: NJ - LW (DK: $3.6K, FD: $3.9K)

Jesse Puljujarvi: EDM - RW (DK: $2.7K, FD: $3.4K)

Jordan Oesterle: ARI - D (DK: $3.6K, FD: $3.5K)

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.

I'm going to try something a little bit different with stacks. I'm going to present my personal favorite, as well as a value stack, and one with the best matchup. Here they are for tonight:

PIT: Crosby-Simon-Guentzel (DK: $17K, FD: $19.9K)

New Jersey is worst on the slate for giving up fantasy points to the opposing top line. In almost 40 minutes of ice time together at 5v5, they have a 64.38 CF% with 4 goals on 27 shots.

WAS: Ovechkin-Kuznetsov-Jaskin (DK: $17.2K, FD: $19.4K)

Jaskin at min-priced on DraftKings makes this an interesting stack in that you have two top-tier players on this line with someone that can hopefully pick up some correlation points.

EDM: Nugent-Hopkins-McDavid-Caggiula: (DK: $19.2K, FD: $19.9K)

I don't have any Holtby in early lineup builds. Like I said, I think this could be a high-scoring game so I want the top line for Edmonton tonight. In 31 minutes together at 5v5 this line has a 61.82 CF% with 12 high-danger shot attempts and 2 goals.

Risk-It-For-The-Biscuit Stack 🍪

NJD: Hall-Hischier-Palmieri: (DK: $18.7K, FD: $20.3K)

Ok, so they've gone cold lately but I mentioned before, I don't like playing Matt Murray. Murray has a .899 save percentage and 3.14 goals against average over the past month and could be a good opportunity for the top line of New Jersey to heat up again.

Good luck today! Tag me in the LineStar Chat @ZeroInDenver if you have any questions or feedback. Follow me on Twitter @ZeroInDenver.