Welcome BACK to the NHL Hat Trick. The NHL season starts on Tuesday October 10, with a three-game slate. However, the LineStar newsletter season opens on Wednesday, October 11, and I'm here to help prepare you for NHL DFS.

I've put together this 15-minute read with a few nuggets of info and strategy, but my focus is providing you with the info you need to make viable NHL lineups and hopefully understand the LineStar tools a little better.

LET'S MAKE THIS EZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Lineups on DraftKings and FanDuel

These newsletters will focus on building lineups for FanDuel and DraftKings so it's essential to know the difference between them.

DraftKings requires you to select 2 Center, 3 Wings, 2 Defenders, 1 Goalie, and 1 UTIL (C/W/D). FanDuel is a little different in requiring 2 Centers, 2 Wings, 2 Defenders, 1 Goalie, and 2 UTIL.

How you'll want to fill those utility spots will depend on the slate and players, so I'll be sure to touch on that and my thoughts in the newsletter for that day and how I plan to approach this.

Scoring

I'll oversimplify a few things here, so bear with me.

NHL DFS scores are very similar to MLB DFS. A low-scoring night will have top scores in the 130-150 range on both sites and a high-scoring night will see 200+ scores.

To continue the MLB to NHL comparison, goals are comparable to homeruns. Most nights, you'll never truly be out of it as a few goals and assists by your players can shoot you up the leaderboard. So, just like baseball and targeting home run hitters, you're going to want to target skaters that have multiple goal upside (find the SNIPE DADDIES).

On the other hand, like pitchers in MLB, I think with NHL and goalies, you can say that "they probably won't win you a tournament, but they could cost you one". There's a lot of variance in goaltending. However, there are a couple common strategies with goalies:

• Pick a goalie with a high win probability

• Pick a goalie that correlates with one of your stacks

• Let it ride with a cheap goalie who will face a lot of shots

General Strategy

As I said earlier, NHL DFS strategy is very similar to MLB DFS. Selecting goaltenders is very similar to picking a pitcher. I’m going to overgeneralize, but most nights you’re going to look for a goaltender that’s going to get 30+ saves, give up 2 goals or less, and get the win. The win bonus can be huge, and sometimes the difference between cashing and not cashing.

With your skaters, you’re looking for players with a good chance to get a goal or assist. Goals are to NHL what home runs are to MLB. I think this makes NHL exciting like MLB in that a goal can move you up in a hurry, and if you have players in your lineup that get an assist, it can move you up that much more. So how does this translate to DFS lineup construction? In a nutshell, this means looking for players who get a lot of ice time and take a lot of shots on goal (or play with a skater who does). Line stacking (focusing on players that skate on the same forward line or power play line) is a common strategy, especially in GPP. The reason for this is you have a potential of 20 fantasy points on each goal on DraftKings (29.6 points on FanDuel) if you have the player that gets the goal in your lineup and each player that picks up the assist.

Selecting Forwards

Let's discuss selecting forwards. Keeping in mind that there are (hopefully) a bunch of you new to NHL DFS and maybe to hockey in general, I’m going to overgeneralize a bit. You can get deep into hockey analytics, but I’ll save that for another day. Instead, I want to focus on the data presented in LineStar.

In a nutshell, I’m looking for skaters who check as many of these boxes as possible:

• Skates on one of the power play lines (PP1 is ideal)

• Gets at least 18 minutes of ice time per game

• Averages 3 or more shots per game (DK 3-point bonus for 5+ shots)

• Averages 10 fantasy points per game on DraftKings (12 fantasy points per game on FanDuel)

• Vivid green for FPPG to Line under “Skaters vs. Opp Team”

You can find this under the stats for each player on the site or app:

Players won’t typically check all boxes, but you’ll notice that in the app and on the LineStar site, green is good, and the more vivid green is even better.

So again, this is a starting point. We’ll get deeper into analytics as the season goes on, but for people new to NHL DFS, I hope it gives you a starting point for what to look for in LineStar when building your lineup.

To make it easy - I try to summarize this data in the newsletter to show you my top 5 as well as my favorite.

There's some secret sauce behind my rankings, but I put a lot of weight into peripheral stats - scoring chances, shot attempts, and trends over time. I also run hundreds of simulations for each player's performance. I highlight what my simulations turned up in a "Boom%" stat where I calculate how often a player exceeded their projection by 25%.

Selecting Defensemen

Next, I want to discuss selecting defensemen. Again, keeping in mind that there are (hopefully) a bunch of you new to NHL DFS and maybe to hockey in general, I’m going to focus on the data presented in LineStar.

In a nutshell, I’m looking for defensemen that check as many of these boxes as possible:

• Skates on one of the power play lines (PP1 is ideal)

• Gets at least 23 minutes of ice time per game

• Averages 3 or more shots per game

• Averages 2 or more shots blocked per game (DK 3-point bonus if 3+ blocks)

You can find this under the stats for each player on the site or app:

In case you didn’t know, there is an advanced sorter for Shots+Blocks/G. When looking for defensemen, this is usually my starting point, as this usually provides for a solid floor. Of course, in DFS, nothing is certain and any player can put up a 0 on any given night. But like I said, this is an excellent place to start.

Again, just like with forwards, I'll show my 5 favorite defensemen each night.

Selecting Goaltenders

Finally, I want to get into selecting a goaltender. It’s a mix of looking at numbers and a little wizardry. Really, for those of you who played MLB DFS, it’s going to feel a lot like selecting a pitcher in MLB. You can oversimplify it (like we’re going to do here) or dive into more advanced analytics (like we’ll do another day). Like I’ve mentioned in past issues of the newsletter, I really want to help those who are new to NHL DFS learn what to look for in the LineStar app.

We'll start by looking at Igor Shesterkin's numbers going into his 10/11 start.

For starters, I almost always want a goalie who can get me 30 saves or more. Check. Next, I’m looking to see if the opposing team is averaging 30 shots or more. Check. Now, this is important. Pay attention to the number of goals allowed and the number of goals the opposing team is scoring. DO THE MATH to get the save percentage. For example, if Shesterkin made 31.6 saves and let in 2.4 goals on average over his past five games, he’s made 31 saves on 34 shots. That makes for a 0.929 save percentage. That’s favorable. If it’s under 0.900, I’ll typically avoid that goalie or stack against him.

Next, look under "Opp Team vs Goalie". Notice how the Opp Goalie FPPG is highlighted in yellow? It's not bad, but it's not great, either. Is it a reason to fade? Not always, but it depends on the slate and what other options are available.

Still - I try to help out and show my favorites for each slate.

Like most things in DFS, there are no sure things. Top-tier goaltenders can get chased. If you like your lineup but are unsure about goaltenders, do a second lineup with a different goaltender.

Line Stacking

I love stacking more than most things. If you know me, you know I live and die by stacking in GPPs. Remember, on each goal, you have the goal scorer and up to two other players picking up an assist. That means a total of three players in your lineup that can pick up points on a goal. That translates to a potential 20 points on DraftKings and 29.6 points on FanDuel. Remember that not every goal will have two assists, and some goals may have no assists.

There are several different ways you can stack in NHL DFS:

(Note: DraftKings allows a max of 6 skaters from a team. FanDuel allows a max of 4 skaters from a team.)

Full Forward Line - Example: Stacking the first line of Vegas, which consists of Jack Eichel, Jonathan Marchessault, and Ivan Barbashev.

Of course, besides the risk of a stack not scoring any points, there is the potential that you might not be able to fit a stack into lineups due to salary constraints. In my example, this stack leaves $4400/player, which is almost certainly not going to work when I don’t have a goaltender selected. This is typical for most top-tier PP1 units like Tampa, Colorado, Boston, Toronto, etc.

All that said, there are several things that I look for when selecting stacks:

• High FPPG to Line under Skater vs Opp Team

• High Goals/G under Goalies

• High Leverage in Stack Finder

• High Safety in Stack Finder

You’ll find that picking stacks is partly looking at numbers/matchups and part sorcery. One last tip I’ll add is that if I think a certain team is going to be popular, I might stack the second or third line instead in GPP to differentiate.

Cash Lineups vs GPP Lineups

If you've been around the NHL DFS block once or twice, you'll know that line stacking is common in GPP contests. You'll often see 3-3, 3-3-2, and 4-3 stacks. This means that in a 3-3 stack, you'll get 3 players from one team and 3 from another. However, this is an incredibly risky strategy and should only be used when playing multiple lineups.

For cash games, one of my favorite strategies is loading my favorite 2 or 3 player stack, pick a solid goalie with a high probability of picking up a win, and fill the rest of my lineup with solid one-offs. I've found that this tends to give me a solid floor which I think is something that you really want for cash games.

Good Luck and LETSSSSSSSSSSSGOOOOOOOOOO

Keep in mind, this is my strategy. You should all do your own research and testing. You might (and probably should) disagree with me in some spots. Don't be afraid to go your own way.

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