Written by LineStar Fantasy Life Coach @ZeroInDenver. Got NHL DFS questions or want to see something covered in this newsletter? Hit me up in LineStar Chat.

Welcome back to the NHL Hat Trick.

There's a 4-game slate today and Pittsburgh gets a rematch against an Islanders team that they beat 6-2 last Thursday. Teams like the Penguins are about as close to stacking/fading Coors in MLB. Right now, LineStar is projecting Crosby to be owned at almost 36% tonight in tournaments. Letang and Kessel are up there to. So knowing that Pittsburgh will probably be high-owned tonight, what do you do?

For starters, keep in mind there's a lot of randomness in hockey. A lot of us got burned by Winnipeg last time out when they got shut out by St Louis on Friday. Shut out. Imagine that. So anything can happen.

I've mentioned this before in chat in other sports, but often the quickest way to the top is keeping in mind "what's supposed to happen usually don't." That said, I'll definitely have some Penguin stacks tonight, but I'm going to go plenty of other directions as well.

That said, here's the slate from a high level.

Heads up - at the time of this writing, most goalies have NOT been confirmed. Keep an eye on chat for updates throughout the day.

✅ Casey DeSmith vs ✅ Robin Lehner

🅿️ Jonathan Quick vs 🅿️ Jimmy Howard

🅿️ Henrik Lundqvist vs ✅ Louis Domingue

🅿️ Keith Kinkaid vs ✅ Martin Jones

Let's look at my favorites on the slate:

Goaltending

So as most of you know, I'm a heavy GPP player. So I'm approaching goalie selection purely looking at upside for tonight. I'll be leaning heavy on goaltenders that will be facing a high volume of shots tonight, as they'll have some of the biggest upside if they can limit goals and pick up a win.

Here are my three favorite goaltenders on the night:

Jimmy Howard, DET (vs LAK) (DK: $7.8K, FD: $8.5K)

Howard had a rough go his last time out, but come on, it was against Tampa. Still, Howard has done well over the past month and LA is only scoring 2.6 goals a game over their last 10 games.

Casey DeSmith, PIT (@ NYI) (DK: $7.6K, FD: $8.3K)

I expect this to be the popular choice tonight. Like I mentioned earlier, the Penguins blew out the Islanders last week and are favored again tonight.

Robin Lehner, NYI (vs PIT) (DK: $7.7K, FD: $7.5K)

Like going Allen last Friday, I'm going Lehner today in a few lineups. He's a bit more expensive than I'd like for the matchup, but again, this gives me a huge advantage in tournaments if he can have a big night, since I think most people will be stacking against him.

#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):

Dylan Larkin: DET - C (DK: $6.2K, FD: $6.9K)

Crosby is the obvious choice, but I like Larkin at a huge salary savings. Larkin has been averaging 7.6 shot attempts (1.6 high danger) and 4.4 shots on net a game.

Joe Pavelski: SJ - W (DK: $6.4K, FD: $8.2K)

Favorite winger on the slate tonight. He's only hitting the net 2.6 times a game, but I like Pavelski's matchup against a Devil's team that played last night and is giving up 3.9 goals a game over their last 10.

Erik Karlsson: SJ - D (DK: $6.2K, FD: $7.1K)

Again, I love SJ against NJ tonight and Karlsson is starting to play like the Karlsson of last season. He has a 61 CF% with 8.5 shot attempts a game with 5.4 shots on net over his last 5 games and is a great late-night hammer for tonight.

Value Twigs 💲

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.

Mika Zibanejad: NYR- C (DK: $5.4K, FD: $7.1K)

Zibanejad isn't hitting the net a lot, but he's averaging 4.8 shot attempts.

Tanner Pearson: PIT- W (DK: $4.3K, FD: $4.5K)

Pearson has been pretty useless in DFS since going to Pittsburgh, but he's cheap exposure to the second line for Pittsburgh.

Ryan Pulock: NYI - D (DK: $4.3K, FD: $4.4K)

I expect the PIT-NYI game to be pretty high event, which is why I like Pulock today. He's averaging 2 shots on net and 1.6 shots a game over his last 5.

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.

Adrian Kempe: LAK - C (DK: $3.4K, FD: $3.8K)

Marcus Johansson: NJ - LW (DK: $3.8K, FD: $3.7K)

Mikhail Sergachev: TB - D (DK: $3.7K, FD: $4K)

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.

Since it's a small slate, I'm going to do things a little different. I'm going to list two of the the highest-owned stacks, two of my favorite stacks, and two "biscuit" (high risk, high reward) stacks:

High-Ownership:

PIT: Guentzel-Crosby-Kessel (DK: $21.6K, FD: $23.8K)

TB: Johnson-Point-Kucherov (DK: $20.5K, FD: $23.1K)

Favorite stacks:

NJD: Hall-Hischier-Palmieri (DK: $18.3K FD: $19.6K)

SJ: Hertl-Couture-Pavelski (DK: $18.2K FD: $21K)

Biscuit stacks:

NYI: Lee-Nelson-Eberle (DK: $14.6K FD: $17.6K)

DET: Nyquist-Larkin-Abdelkader (DK: $15.8K FD: $16.4K)

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