In this article, I will be sharing some tips on how to construct a winning NHL lineup. This will be focused around tournaments or GPP’s. The aim of the tournament is to, obviously, score as many points as possible and finish as high up the leaderboard as you can. Hopefully the tips that are to follow will help you achieve these goals.
Picking a Keeper
Usually when choosing your goalie for the night, you will have to try and find some value and fade the highest priced options. It’s incredibly hard to get a top forward line if you choose one of the better goalies, so you have to try and find a gem at a lower price.
This can be a backup keeper who is in line for a start, a keeper with a unfavourable matchup or maybe even a rookie who is making his first start. There is always value somewhere, you just have to find it and take a risk.
Choosing your defence
Of course, for any position in DFS tournaments we are looking for players with a high ceiling. The way NHL DFS tournament scoring is centred around goals and assists, we need to try and find defensive players who chip in with these regularly. Most of the time it is more effective to stack players from the same team, for instance playing two defenders from the Montreal Canadiens. We also need to look for players that play on the same line and, preferably, play on powerplays. Powerplays give defenders the highest chance of grabbing a goal or an assist, so it is usually vital to find players on this line.
As defenders don’t get any points for a shutout, you want to find defenders from a matchup that is expected to have a high number of goals. Also fast faced matches are great, as defenders receive points for blocked shots.
Finding your Forwards
Choosing forwards for your lineup is very similar to picking defenders. If possible with the salary cap, you should try to find the highest scoring lineup with a team who have a great matchup. Again, you want to try an stack players from the same team. As you need to choose 2 wingers and 2 centres, you should try and stack one winger and one centre together from 2 teams. If both of these teams go onto to produce, you can quickly see yourself shooting up the leaderboard. NHL scoring is heavily weighted towards goals and assists, so by having players from the same team and lineups, it’s gives you a great chance of scoring points from a goal and an assist from the same goal.
