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.

#NylanderWatch is finally over and William Nylander is slotted to skate on the top line with Matthews and Marleau tonight. If you like that narrative, by all means play him or that whole line tonight. I know I will, but I don't want to spend any time below on that, as we've got a solid 11-game slate tonight with a lot of good spots and options. Here's how it looks from a high-level.

If you missed yesterday, you'll note that I added an "Avg" column to the slate graphic. That's basically my expected goals for each team. It's a combination of what teams have been scoring and allowing along with my secret sauce to get a number of goals that I expect to see from each game today. It's far from perfect, but I've found it useful.

Heads up - at the time of this writing, most goalies have NOT been confirmed. That's to be expected as this is a large slate with several west coast games. Keep an eye on chat for updates throughout the day.

✅ Philipp Grubauer vs ✅ Roberto Luongo

🅿️ Thomas Greiss vs ✅ Casey DeSmith

✅ Sergei Bobrovsky vs ✅ Anthony Stolarz

🅿️ Jonathan Bernier vs ✅ Garret Sparks

✅ Tuukka Rask vs ✅ Louis Domingue

✅ Carey Price vs ✅ Craig Anderson

🅿️ Phoenix Copley vs ✅ Adin Hill

🅿️ Devan Dubnyk vs ✅ Mike Smith

🅿️ Pekka Rinne vs 🅿️ Jacob Markstrom

🅿️ Corey Crawford vs 🅿️ Marc-Andre Fleury

🅿️ Keith Kinkaid vs 🅿️ Jonathan Quick

Let's look at my favorites 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:

Marc-Andre Fleury, VGK (vs COL) (DK: $8.3K, FD: $8.9K)

Fleury has been consistent over his last 5 games. Nothing outstanding, but consistent enough and a good matchup against a struggling Chicago team that played last night.

Philipp Grubauer, COL (@ FLA) (DK: $7.5K, FD: $7.3K)

Grubauer has been pretty solid as a backup for Colorado this season with a 6-1 record and a .920 save percentage and 2.5 goals against average over his last 3 games. He has a tough matchup in Florida, but I really like his price tonight.

Adin Hill, ARI (@ WAS) (DK: $7.1K, FD: $7.7K)

I don't care about the matchup tonight. Hill has been outstanding since filling in for Raanta. Sure, this could go horribly wrong, but I'll keep chancing it at this price.

#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):

John Tavares: YOR - C (DK: $7.4K, FD: $8K)

Lost in the return of Matthews and Nylander is just how good Tavares and Marner have been. I love Tavares as a way to get Toronto exposure tonight at lower projected ownership. He's averaging 4 shots a game on 6.8 shot attempts (3.2 high-danger) in his last 5 games.

Jonathan Drouin: MON - LW (DK: $6.5K, FD: $5.8K)

I'm still a sucker for rostering players against Ottawa and Drouin is my favorite forward to face them tonight. Averaging 4.2 shots a game and facing a team that has giving up 3.8 goals a game over their last 10.

Cam Atkinson: CLS - RW (DK: $7.3K, FD: $7.3K)

Dude can do no wrong to me right now. I'll keep playing him at heavy exposure every night while he keeps playing like he has.

Tyson Barrie: COL - D (DK: $6K, FD: $5.7K)

Barrie has been averaging 4 shots a game over his last 5 and plays on the top powerplay unit with the three-headed monster of Colorado.

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.

Bo Horvat: VAN - C (DK: $4.7K, FD: $5.5K)

Looking at the slate, I think there are a lot of spots that people are going to gravitate to, so I start to look at spots that people are going to overlook. Vancouver is one. Granted, Vancouver isn't playing well, but Rinne hasn't been consistent lately, plus Nashville is now without both Filip Forsberg and Victor Arvidsson.

Marcus Johansson: NJ- LW (DK: $4.1K, FD: $3.7K)

Johansson has been quietly averaging 3.8 shots on net his last 5 games on 6 shot attempts (2.3 high danger).

Reilly Smith: VGK - RW (DK: $5.1K, FD: $5K)

Reilly Smith deserves mention, as he's pretty well priced and has a great matchup (Cam Ward is expected to start for Chicago. He should be well owned tonight and for good reason, 5.6 shot attempts (2.2 high danger) with 3 shots on net a game over his last 5.

Jared Spurgeon: MIN - D (DK: $4.6K, FD: $4.6K)

Decent price for a dude that takes 2.4 shots and blocks 2 shots a game over his last 5 games and will see time on the top powerplay unit for Minnesota.

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.

Jeff Carter: LAK - C (DK: $3.9K, FD: $5.9K) **DraftKings Only**

Alex Killorn: TB - LW (DK: $3.7K, FD: $4.4K)

Andreas Johnsson: TOR - RW (DK: $3.2K, FD: $3.6K)

John Moore: NJ - D (DK: $3.3K, 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.

CLS: Panarin-Dubois-Atkinson (DK: $18.7K, FD: $21.1K)

Going to keep riding this stack. Atkinson has been hot and Columbus gets a great matchup against a Philly team that can be really bad at times.

VGK: Marchessault-Karlsson-Smith: (DK: $16.4K, FD: $19.2K)

Best matchup on the slate in terms of fantasy points allowed to an opposing line. Fairly inexpensive stack on DraftKings.

COL: Landeskog-Mackinnon-Rantanen (DK: $22.7K, FD: $24.9K)

The most expensive stack on the slate, but with a great matchup against the Panthers who are giving up 3.74 goals a game. Besides that, I noticed on the LineStar projections page that MacKinnon and Rantanen are two of the highest projected players on the slate, so this could be a high-owned stack despite the price.

Risk-It-For-The-Biscuit Stack 🍪

MIN: Zucker-Staal-Granlund (DK: $17.2K, FD: $18.8K)

I have this projected as the highest scoring game on the slate, so I will have both sides of this coin. BIG SAVE DAVE has become NO SAVE DAVE and Mike Smith hasn't been any better (No goalie confirmation for Calgary yet) so this is a stack that could fly completely under the radar and sneak in a hat trick.

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