Hey there! My name is Mike, aka ycmmat (you can’t make money at that) on Twitter, guy with the twitter lists, tilting his face off on every dfs sport there is, except now I’m retired from dfs. So I’m not playing DFS anymore (sad!) but a lot less tilting in my life (happy!). That said, I still love the game and think I can make some good of all I’ve learned, so I’ll be doing slate breakdowns for Paydirt this year! I hope you enjoy and find them useful.
For conversation and game theory on the charts with updated ownership distributions as well as the top ownership lineups, jump in the Paydirt discord! Free with this link: https://discord.gg/mQ6u5dfawF
When James reached out to me to do some content, I thought sure I’ll do some content, Tuesday’s and Thursday’s normally have lots of games so there should be lots to talk about…
…except opening night. Three games! And one of them starts an hour and a half earlier than normal. Great stuff NHL!
Now before we dig in – I’ve never given advice in a written form before so this is all new to me and I don’t really have a bossy personality that likes to tell people what to do. Happy to get feedback on all of this. I’m hoping to have a consistent structure on Tuesday/Thursday once I get my sea legs under me.
General Slate Concepts:
For two/three game slates I like to do the following 3-2-1 lineups (Forwards):
- One full line (three players)
- Two players from a line
- One off forward
Now the real trick with this is then filling in the D and the Goalie from the teams from those lines. So your one-off forward isn’t necessarily alone.
For each lineup you will have players from no more than three teams. Correlation is king in the NHL, use it to your advantage.
As an example: PIT1 as the full line, NAS2 as the two players and Yanni Gourde as a one-off (JUST AN EXAMPLE don’t yell at me about one-off Yanni Gourde). But then filling those in with Roman Josi and Vince Dunn on D and then Juuse Saros as a goalie. Something like this:
| Player | Team | Position |
| Sidney Crosby | PIT | C |
| Yanni Gourde | SEA | C |
| Gustav Nyquist | NSH | W |
| Kiefer Sherwood | NSH | W |
| Jake Guentzel | PIT | W |
| Roman Josi | NSH | D |
| Vince Dunn | SEA | D |
| Juuse Saros | NSH | G |
| Bryan Rust | PIT | W |
Lineups example
A cleansing note about goalies: Fuck goalies. Fuck goalie scoring. Fuck 35 save bonuses.
I feel better now.
Roster Construction Overview:
You will hear a lot about people justifying their goalie choices. Just one man’s opinion but don’t overthink it. It’s all noise. If you think:
“I have the salary”
“I will UPGRADE my goalie”
Just stop. Feel free to play a goalie for any number of reasons – He’s got a new mask! He went back to his old mask! It’s his birthday! His wife just had a baby! His father is on the trip! His mother is on the trip!
You get the idea. Just because you have the salary? HELL NO. I’ll break your fingers.
And never any players against the goalie in the same lineup. Sure, you CAN do this, and it CAN work but as a general rule it’s best to just not bother.
Also, only use D on the power play, first or second PP. Don’t twist yourself into knots making this harder than it needs to be.
Maybe I can get used to this “bossing people around” thing.
So that’s a general overview of building lineups.
Slate Specific Thoughts:
TB1 is $23,200. 46% percent of your salary cap at massive ownership. Hard pass. Fun part about not using TB is that since they are the first game you are either dead as fuck quick or in great shape.
I’m going to try and keep track of the lines to stand against and see how they fare.
One full line (three players)
In no particular order:
| Player | SK1 | SK2 | SK3 | Salary |
| PIT FL2 | Evgeni Malkin | Rickard Rakell | Reilly Smith | 17500 |
| VEG FL1 | Jack Eichel | Jonathan Marchessault | Ivan Barbashev | 16700 |
| SEA FL1 | Jared McCann | Matty Beniers | Jordan Eberle | 16200 |
| PIT FL1 | Sidney Crosby | Jake Guentzel | Bryan Rust | 20200 |
Two players from a line
Feel free to use any two from the lines above here as well
| CHI FL1 | Connor Bedard | Taylor Hall | Ryan Donato | 15500 |
| NAS FL1 | Filip Forsberg | Ryan O’Reilly | Juuso Parssinen | 14700 |
| SEA FL3 | Oliver Bjorkstrand | Eeli Tolvanen | Yanni Gourde | 12600 |
| VEG FL2 | Mark Stone | Chandler Stephenson | Brett Howden | 13400 |
| SEA FL2 | Jaden Schwartz | Andre Burakovsky | Alexander Wennberg | 11600 |
One off forward
Not gonna list a bunch of guys here but this is where you might like to use a Kucherov/Stamkos/Point with a Sergachev or Hedman D. Any of the guys above are probably great, matched with the corresponding D on that team.
Defencemen
Sometimes the way I like to pick D is that you play a D from a team that is gonna have a chalky forward line – so Hedman/Sergachev or Letang/Erik Karllsson. But again, I’m letting my forward choices drive my defencemen choices for the most part.
Goalies – see above.
Happy to answer any questions in discord. Good luck tonight!