Hello! We’ve finally made it. The baseball regular season just came to a close, and, fortunately, we can now fill the weeklong void between ultra-tilting NFL slates with some hockey instead. This is the earliest hockey start I can remember, but I didn’t really get super into hockey until last year, so perhaps I am not the most reliable source on this matter.
5 games on the board for Tuesday, though the season-opener – the weirdly-early 5 PM ET puck drop between Florida and Carolina – isn’t on the DraftKings main slate. DK is picking it up at 7 ET and rolling with a 4-gamer featuring 4 different start times. A couple of games early, a couple of games late.
If you’re new to the NHL DFS streets, check out this strategy guide for the basics. Stacking and correlation are king, so the primary focus of this article will be identifying the best stacks to play in tournaments. There’s a lot of volatility in this sport, but, sometimes, we can use that to our advantage.
I’m not even sure why I’m still filibustering. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably already skipped past the intro to the first H2, so you’ll never even see this sentence. Purple monkey dishwasher.
Best NHL DFS Stacks for Tuesday
- EDM1 (McDavid/Draisaitl/Podkolzin)
- EDM2 (Nugent-Hopkins/Hyman/Howard)
- BOS1 (Lindholm/Pastrnak/Peterka)
- BOS2 (Zacha/Mittelstadt/Geekie)
- NYR1 (Zibanejad/Perreault/Lafrenière)
- NYR2 (Miller/Dorofeyev/Bjorkstrand)
- TOR1 (Matthews/?????????/Roslovic)
- TOR2 (Tavares/McKenna/Nylander)
- MTL1 (Suzuki/Caufield/Kreider)
- MTL2 (Demidov/Slafkovsky/Newhook)
- VANPP1 (Rossi/Pettersson/Boeser/DeBrusk)
- CHI1 (Nazar/Kantserov/Kane)
- VGK1 (Eichel/Stone/Barbashev)
Yep, that’s, uh, almost all of ’em. The Oilers are on the slate, and any time the Oilers are on a slate, a huge decision point is whether you want to play them, as they’re quite expensive. Edmonton hired noted redass Mike Babcock this offseason, a man with a history of verbally abusing his players. Should be good for vibes!
Anyway, Babcock has already said he’ll start the season by playing Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl on the same line despite his history of breaking up his stars. The McDavid/Draisaitl line that featured Zach Hyman last year was incredibly effective (3.96 xG per 60 minutes), but it sounds like Hyman will start the season on the second line alongside Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Vasily Podkolzin looks like the guy who’ll start on line 1 next to the MVPs, a combination we saw for just 28 minutes all of last season. It was a productive 28 minutes (3.41 xG/60), and Podkolzin’s $4,000 salary at least somewhat helps to offset paying a combined $16,500 to play McDavid and Draisaitl together.
We should also talk about the matchup. They’re playing the Canucks, who happened to be one of our favorite punching bags last season. They were the second-leakiest defense in hockey (2.8 xG/60 against), though they were only 21st in penalty minutes taken. You don’t need me to tell you that McDavid/Draisaitl/Podkolzin is a great stack, but it’s certainly going to be popular, and you’re paying over $20,000 for it.
It sure doesn’t seem like the Canucks will be any better this season – much to the chagrin of grarg – so I don’t hate EDM2 (Nugent-Hopkins/Hyman/Howard). Isaac Howard is a child and a former first-round pick set to play a bigger role. This combination will only run you $15,000, and you still get some power play exposure with RNH and Hyman. Edmonton may not spend a ton of time with a man advantage, however. Evan Bouchard ($6,700) is happy to bomb from deep and looks like the best combination of upside and value among the more expensive Oilers.
The Rangers were a dreary disaster last year, but they made some changes over the summer. New York plucked Pavel Dorofeyev out of Las Vegas, and he’s projected to line up on NYR2 alongside JT Miller and another new face, Oliver Bjorkstrand, who came over from Tampa Bay. There’s no telling how that line will fare considering it’s brand new, but it’s got some firepower, and it’s affordable ($14,600).
The projected top line (Zibanejad/Perreault/Lafreniere) was pretty garbagey (2.25 xG/60) last year in a huge 264-minute sample. The counter is the matchup against a Boston team that finished with the second-most penalty minutes taken and the fifth-worst xG allowed/60 mark in the league. Of course, the Rangers were also ghastly at drawing penalties, ranking 29th in penalty minutes for/60. Something’s gotta give!
The Rangers and Bruins were both excellent on the power play last year and leaky on defense in those situations. Hey, that’s what you want! From a fantasy perspective, at least:
I’m inclined to play a PP1 combination. Adam Fox ($5,600) is a nice upper midrange defenseman running point on that unit, and I’ll probably play him with Dorofeyev/Lafreniere/Zibanejad and hope for the best.
While the Bruins were heavily penalized, they were also one of the best in the league (4th, to be more precise) in penalty minutes drawn/60. Hampus Lindholm ($3,400) stands out as one of the better defensive punts on this slate running point on the top power play line along with David Pastrnak, Pavel Zacha, Morgan Geekie, and Utah Mammoth legend, JJ Peterka.
Lindholm almost feels like a must if stacking Boston. Guessing he’ll be chalky, but seems like decent chalk at that salary. I’m really happy to play any PP1 combination from the Boston side.
And now to one of our old favorites from last year, the upstart Canadiens. Unfortunately, it sounds like they’ll start the season with Juraj Slafkovsky playing on the second line despite the Suzuki/Caufield/Slafkovsky line being wildly productive (3.03 xG/60) in over 530 minutes a season ago. Sounds like MTL1 will be Suzuki and Caufield with Ducks castoff Chris Kreider to start the year. Not as exciting!
We’ll still see that old trio line up together on the power play along with Ivan Demidov and Lane Hutson. Toronto was middle of the pack in conceding penalties last year, while Montreal drew them at the league’s 7th-best rate. You’re paying nearly $20,000 to jam Slafkovsky, Caufield, and Suzuki into the same lineup, though it’ll surely be lower-owned than the similarly-priced EDM1 combination. I’m probably just not doing that very much, though they do pair pretty naturally with some of the cheaper Boston combinations (Various Lindholms/Pastrnak/Peterka, for example).
If getting exposure to the Canadiens, the $4,400 Demidov comes in handy as a part of that PP1. Playing him with 2 of the 3 from the Suzuki/Caufield/Slafkovsky trio works pretty well. I’ll take Hutson over the similarly-priced Noah Dobson as the defender to tack on, though the non-PP Mike Matheson is cheap ($3,800) and provides top-line correlation.
On and on we go. The Maple Leafs, like the Rangers, were a calamity last year, but they had immense lottery luck and managed to nab wunderkind Gavin McKenna with the top overall pick in the draft. It sounds like he’ll slot into the second line with veterans John Tavares and William Nylander on a line that could have quite a bit of firepower. Tavares/Nylander/Matias Maccelli averaged a sparkling 3.34 xG/60 together in 231 minutes last year, and McKenna should be the real deal. Montreal was hardly elite defensively last season, and they took a ton of penalties, but that TOR2 line is nearly $21,000. More expensive than EDM1, folks.
TOR1 is now in flux, as the Leafs traded Matthew Knies to the CBJ in a deal for Kirill Marchenko…today. Whether Marchenko will be ready to debut just one day after a trade remains to be seen, and whether DK adds him to the player pool…also remains to be seen. We’re just gonna have to see what happens. There’s a ton of talent on both top lines, especially if Marchenko plays.
Montreal was heavily penalized in 2025. Toronto signed Darren Raddysh away from Tampa Bay to spearhead the power play. I’m probably finding the extra salary to get up to Bouchard or taking the slight savings with Fox, but Raddysh + some combo of Matthews/Nylander/Tavares/Roslovic is a very sneaky GPP play. Maybe they’ll suck again! But there’s a ton of talent here, so I’d probably bet against it.
Pettersson/DeBrusk/Boeser (2.85 xG/60) was decently productive last year, and the Oilers, as ever, likely won’t be great defensively. Tristan Jarry (-4.1 goals saved above expected!) was pretty horrendous after coming over in a trade. Brock Boeser is the most expensive PP1 player for the Canucks at a whopping $5,000. You can talk me into 4-manning a version of Boeser/Rossi/Petterson/DeBrusk/Hronek for value.
Connor Bedard is out, so there’s also some value in a super-cheap CHI1 (Nazar/Kantserov/Kane) or PP1 (Frondell/Bertuzzi/Kantserov/Kane/Byram) stack. The VGK play slow and are elite defensively, so I’d rather play Vancouver if hunting for something cheap, though.
Vegas underperformed last season and then nearly won the Cup. So it goes in hockey. Dorofeyev was traded to New York, so we’re looking at a VGK1 of Eichel/Stone/Barbashev here with Karlsson/Marner/Howden on the second line. 3 lines that played at least 50 minutes together last season averaged at least 3 xG/60, and all 3 of those lines had Mitch Marner.
Contrary to popular belief, the Canucks were not the worst defensive team in hockey last season because the Blackhawks (2.93 xG against/60) were. Dorofeyev’s departure means Shea Theodore presumably pops back up as the point man on PP1 with Eichel/Marner/Stone/Tomas Hertl. I think I want all of this?
Stack Rankings
- EDM1/PP1
- VGK PP1
- BOS PP1
- NYR PP1
- TOR PP1
- MTL
- EDM2
- VAN PP1
- CHI1
Noah Simpson is a New England-based DFS writer who has spent the better part of a decade obsessing over MLB DFS. He got his start playing DFS recreationally before realizing he was spending more time building spreadsheets than actually watching games, and decided to make it official. At DFSBuild, Noah covers MLB DFS strategy with a focus on finding edges that casual players overlook. When he’s not staring at Statcast data, he’s somewhere on a hiking trail in Maine with his two dogs, Sandboy and Johnner, who are undefeated at ignoring his lineup advice, because they are dogs. They don’t have the cognitive or motor skills required to operate a computer, let alone process complex theories and information.
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