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.

I want to take a minute to talk about opportunity cost. We kind of touched on this yesterday in chat, but I think it's still relevant on today's slate. Overall, I think this gets overlooked a lot as people work miracles to get a top-tier player in their lineup. We can take yesterday's example of MacKinnon, but it's not worth it to hindsight it, so let's take Eichel for example today.

Let's say you're building a lineup on DraftKings. You take a goalie like Vasilevskiy for $8400 and Eichel for $8000. That leaves you with an average of $4800 per player remaining. Take two defensemen at $3700 and $3800 respectively, and that leaves you with $5220 per player remaining. Not bad, but it's going to make it tough to take another top tier player in your lineup.

Let's give it a try. Add Johnny Gaudreau to your lineup for $7600 and that leaves $4625 to fill 4 remaining spots. Again, doable, but you're dipping into lower salary players.

So what does that mean? It means you need to consider what is it going to cost your lineup to take Eichel and Gaudreau and what you need your lineup to score to do well. How well do you need to do? I think that's something you should think of. If you're playing cash games, you'll need 35-40 points (or more) most nights to cash in double ups. Just going off projections with what we have now, we're projected at 23 lineups. To hit 40+ points, we're asking for roughly 5 fantasy points each from each of the remaining players at $4625. Certainly doable, but it's asking for a lot out of your lower-salary players.

Overall, what I'm getting at is I wouldn't blindly put Eichel, Matthews, or Kucherov in your lineups. DFS isn't about picking 1-3 of the best players. To win, you need a solid lineup from top to bottom. I think that if you are building a lineup and get to your final spot and have $4000 left and don't know what to do, your lineup isn't solid. Like a puzzle, each piece should go together. If you've been struggling with lineup construction, hopefully this gives you a little more to think about.

With that said, let's dive in to today's slate. First, let's look at team numbers over the last 10 games from a high level:

Need more help narrowing it down? Here are my top projected goals for and goals allowed on tonight's slate:

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

🅿️ Jimmy Howard vs ✅ Carter Hart

🅿️ John Gibson vs ✅ Alexandar Georgiev

🅿️ Frederik Andersen vs ✅ Keith Kinkaid

✅ Roberto Luongo vs ✅ Carter Hutton

✅ Martin Jones vs ✅ Devan Dubnyk

🅿️ David Rittich vs ✅ Ben Bishop

🅿️ Pekka Rinne vs ✅ Cam Ward

✅ Robin Lehner vs 🅿️ Darcy Kuemper

🅿️ Jake Allen vs 🅿️ Cam Talbot

🅿️ Andrei Vasilevskiy vs 🅿️ Jacob Markstrom

🅿️ Connor Hellebuyck vs 🅿️ Jonathan Quick

In other news, Taylor Hall is expected to play tonight, but is still a GTD.

Jason Spezza is out tonight (illness).

James Neal is out tonight (upper-body injury).

Keep an eye on chat for updates throughout the day.

Now, lets 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 heavily 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:

Frederik Andersen (@ NJ) (DK: $8.1K, FD: $9.1K)

Little bit of win-chasing here (and a little risky against a team that is scoring 3.02 goals a game over their last 10), but there's upside as the Devils are averaging 33 shots on net a game.

Carter Hutton, BUF (vs FLA) (DK: $8.2K, FD: $8.3K)

It's not everyday that I like a Buffalo goalie, and not everyday I pick a goalie against Florida, but Hutton has been solid over the past month with a 2.63 GAA and a .920 save percentage.

Connor Hellebuyck, WPG (@ LA) (DK: $7.9K, FD: $8.6K)

Win-chasing again as the Jets face a Kings team that has only won twice out of their last 10 games. Like Andersen, Hellebuyck hasn't been great, but he's gotten good support from his offense and has a 7-3 record over the past month.

#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):

Jack Eichel: BUF - C (DK: $8K, FD: $7.9K)

Top-ranked center on the slate tonight. Eichel is averaging 8.4 shot attempts (1.6 high danger) with 5 shots on net a night and faces a Florida team that is giving up 3.31 goals a game over their last 10 games.

Johnny Gaudreau: CGY - W (DK: $7.6K, FD: $8.3K)

Gaudreau has a 67 CF% with 6 shot attempts (1.4 high danger) and 4.2 shots on net a game over his last 5 games.

Erik Karlsson: SJ - D (DK: $6.2K, FD: $7.3K)

Karlsson has been averaging 9 shot attempts with 5.4 shots on net in just over 23 minutes a game over his last 5 games.

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.

Nazem Kadri: TOR C (DK: $4.5K, FD: $5.4K)

Like I mentioned before, if you're rostering Eichel, you're going to need someone cheap in your second C spot. For this, I recommend Kadri. Averaging 3.4 shots on net a game and plays on the top powerplay unit for Toronto

Ondrej Kase: ANH - W (DK: $5.4K, FD: $4.6K)

Kase gets a good matchup against a NYR team that is giving up 3.89 goals a game over their last 10 and is averaging 7 shot attempts (2.2 high danger) and 4.2 shots on net over the last 5 games.

Mike Matheson: FLA - D (DK: $4.1K, FD: $4.1K)

Matheson has been averaging 4.4 shot attempts and 2.4 shots on net with 1.6 blocks in his last 5 games and faces a Buffalo team that is giving up 3.02 goals a game over their last 10 games.

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.

Dylan Strome: CHI - C (DK: $3.6K, FD: $4.7K)

Mathieu Perreault: WPG - W (DK: $3.4K, FD: $3.6K)

Tony DeAngelo: NYR- D (DK: $3.5K, FD: $3.6K)

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 list two of the the highest-projected owned stacks, two of my favorite stacks, and two "biscuit" (high risk, high reward) stacks:

High-Ownership (Based on LineStar Ownership Projections):

WPG: Ehlers-Scheifele-Wheeler (DK: $20.8K, FD: $22.1K)

EDM: Chiasson-McDavid-Draisaitl (DK: $20.2K, FD: $21.2K)

Favorite stacks:

BUF: Skinner-Eichel-Reinhart (DK: $21.1K FD: $21K)

CGY: Gaudreau-Monahan-Lindholm (DK: $21.5K FD: $22.6K)

Biscuit stacks (high risk, high upside):

DET: Nyquist-Larkin-Abdelkader (DK: $15.1K FD: $17.3K)

VAN: Leivo-Pettersson-Boeser (DK: $14.7K FD: $16.3K)

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