What’s up everyone. Welcome to our first NHL slate of the 2025-26 regular season!
We have a small 3-game slate to start the year, so lets dive right in. I’ll start by going position-by-position and give you some projection and ownership notes. Then I’ll get into stacks and roster construction for both large and small fields. Use this article in conjunction with the NHL models and Contest Sims to give yourself a real chance at winning each and every slate.
Note: Industry-Wide content isn’t coming out until an hour before lock today. Updates may occur after that
NHL Positional Overview
Center
- Our models are extremely bullish on MacKinnon despite the worst matchup in hockey. The Industry is divided on his ownership, but 30%-ish seems right to me. Sims across the industry are way over on him and at 8500 he’s a priority spend for me
- Bennett (6600), Miller (6300), Trocheck (5800), Byfield (4400), and Lundell (4100) look like the highest owned guys besides MacKinnon. They’re all around the 25-30% range, so it’s pretty flat ownership-wise
- The Industry is divided on Crosby’s (7000) ownership, but I can’t see him being that popular. Our models are bullish on him and he looks great facing chalky Shesterkin
- People are going to play Danault and LAK3 as usual, but Brock Nelson (4700) and Evan Rodrigues (3700) project pretty well as contrarian options
Synopsis: Crosby and MacKinnon are elite plays that are underowned. Rodrigues and Kunin are two FLA guys who project well that you could tack onto a stack to be different.
Wing
- Panarin (7700) and Reinhart (7200) are going to be the chalk spends at the position. I expect them both to be over 30%. We are slightly below market on both. Kempe is also fine.
- The field is on Cuylle (3800), Lafreniere (4100), and Laferriere (4200, Q) as value here. They should all be in the mid-20s ownership-wise. Same with Fiala who seems fine.
- We are high on Cuylle. However, we’re even more bullish on Ryan Donato (4300), Victor Olofsson (2700), and Rickard Rakell (5900). The same is true of Necas (6100) and Nichushkin (5000) to a lesser extent
Synopsis: Chalk Panarin or Reinhart are fine. However, spending down to Rakell/Nichushkin/Necas seems like a very strong play. The value end here is a great spot to get different with Donato and Olofsson.
Defense
- Rinzel (4100), Makar (8500), Fox (6500), and Jones (5000) are likely the chalky guys at 20% OWN and up. Schneider (3000) will be the value folks go to.
- Brandt Clarke (3400) and Mikey Anderson (3000) are two guys who project as reasonable values industry-wide with moderate ownership. Our model does not like them, but I think Matt Grzelcyk (2500) and Brian Dumoulin (2600) are also reasonable values if you want to punt a spot. Grzelcyk plays opposite Rinzel on first pairing, so there’s some leverage to be had there
- We have strong projections on Erik Karlsson. He looks solid at moderate ownership.
Synopsis: Makar is an elite play. He’s such a strong play that he sims as a top 3 UTIL play across the industry. If you don’t want to play him, Karlsson seems like a fine contrarian spend.
Goalies
- Bobrovsky (8400) and Shesterkin (8100) are chalk.
- We love Knight (7000), but beware that win equity is important on smaller slates. I’m probably pairing at least one CHI skater with him (Hi Donato)
Synopsis: Win equity matters, but the sims think Knight is the play. The beta play is definitely Igor, but he’s fine.
NHL Stacks and Theory
- Here are your chalk builds. LAK2 will be almost as popular as the FLA and NYR lines as well. They should all have mid-20s ownership and up.
- The Jury is still out on how owned COL1 ends up being. My guess is around 18-20%. The Sims think this is way too low and I completely agree
- it sims well in some spots, but I will definitely be playing some PIT PP stacks since both Karlsson and LeTang are on it. Yeah I know I just panned PP stacks, but the slate size is good for it and it sims out well.
- COL1/2/PP, PIT1/PP, Ryan Donato, Cale Makar, Erik Karlsson and Spencer Knight come up the most for me in my sims. COL and FLA both pop up in the form of 5 or 6-man stacks quite a bit for the flagship GPP today. That makes sense due to the small slate and massive field size. The sims say no different for the high stakes, smaller field stuff as well.
- It’s a bit different for the 3-max contests. You get more Kings stacks, still plenty of PIT, but less of MacKinnon/Makar
- Spencer Knight sims the best industry-wide regardless of field size. Igor is there for the beta boys.
Conclusion
This is going to be a bit of a work-in-progress early in the year, but hopefully it was helpful. I think the main points to take are 1) Panthers and Rangers are overowned in 3 and 4-man stacks 2) PIT1 and COL1/2 are likely underowned 3) Donato, Olofsson, Nelson, and Rakell are strong values 4) play Cale Makar and Spencer Knight. Just do it.