NHL is easy! Writing articles is hard.
No really, NHL is pretty straightforward but you do have to make choices.
It’s HARD to score goals in the NHL so if you spread your player ownership too thin then it is just making your lineups a lot harder to climb to the top of the leaderboard.
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
So how do I build my lineups?
Stacking
3 man stack CWW
3 man stack CWW
D
D
G
Now you absolutely can pair a D from the same team with your 3 man stack but is it “BETTER”? A few hundred slates I’ve looked at says surprisingly not. Sometimes you win with a correlated D man or a correlated G and sometimes one-off D men are the way to go. You may be afraid of going with two uncorrelated D and an uncorrelated G but those hit with regular frequency as well. So, which do you use? And when?
I’d be on an island somewhere if I could tell you that.
What you really want to do is be judicious with the FWD stacks and Defencemen you make available to your optimizer. You CANNOT use everyone.
Defencemen: Simple Really
Are they on the First line Power play? Then Yes. Full send.
Are they on the Second PP unit? It depends. (I’ll talk about this next time – I told you writing articles was hard)
Are they not on the Power play? Then No.
Now obviously coaches do what NHL coaches do and maybe Cale Makar or Erik Karlsson go off the power play because they missed a morning meeting or some such nonsense during practice and so they may not appear as on the power play. Superstars you keep regardless.
Forward Stacks: Still Simple
It should be noted that forward “lines” can sometimes be at the whim of NHL beat writers but for the most part they are reflective of the offensive talent of the line. i.e 1 is better than 2 is better than 3 etc.
Fourth line guys – get out and never come back.
Third line guys – sparingly. Like maybe one of these but on any slate over 5-6 games you are only looking to see that maybe a quality line didn’t get mis-numbered and really should be a Second line.
First and Second line guys – Yes! But not all of them. More below!
Goalies – I’m not even giving them a header. Whoever the optimizer puts in. God speed.
Slate Specific Thoughts:
There are seven games tonight. That’s 56 forward lines total. That’s a lot.
Scrap the fourth line. Down to 42.
Looking quickly at the third lines. They are all out. Down to 28.
28 is much more manageable but is still too many.
Grab all the first lines.
Even SJ???
Especially SJ1. Don’t be a coward. Yeah SJ overall is bad. Hertl/Hoffman/Zadina are all scorers and who else is gonna score from that team?
From the ROO export:
Now that’s 14 lines, that’s pretty good. You don’t need much more than that. Maybe pick a couple more from the group of second lines. If you are not sure just go with the top 4-5 based on the median projections. Some of this comes down to a bit of feel for the players lines – do they always play together? Is this a new line combo? Did they get blown out last game and the coach is likely to blow up the lines? Obviously early in the season so there is less to go on there right now.
I’d keep NJ2, NYR2, FLA2, DET2, SEA2, PHI2
3-Max Thoughts
You need to pick one full line and use that line in each of your three lineups. That way when that lineup goes off then you are giving yourself more options with all three of your lineups. And now you may say “what happens when that lineup dies?” and my answer to that is…you’re fucked, that’s what. But that’s dfs.
For example sake let’s say you are stacking 3/3 forward lines as such:
BUF1/SJ1
BUF1/DET2
BUF1/FLA1
BUF1 gets shutout by the mighty Rangers, you aren’t winning shit no matter what else happens.
Example 2:
BUF1/SJ1
NJ1/DET2
DAL1/FLA1
BUF1 goes off! BOOM. But now what is San Jose doing? Playing terribly as expected, you aren’t winning shit.
Example 3:
BUF1/SJ1
BUF1/DET2
BUF1/FLA1
However, from the first example if BUF1 goes off you now have a couple of extra chances at the money.
I mean, nothing is fool proof and you still have your goalies and your defence to trip you up but I’ve found it to have been a successful way to look at it.
Now, the full line you pick is pretty important – so using a highly projected one is the way to go. This is not the place to try and get a sneaky low owned line – there can be some ownership on them, that’s fine you can make up that difference in the other forward line, defence and goalie.
Will go into 20-max strategy next time – short story though it is really just an expansion of the 3-max thoughts above.
Good luck tonight, hit up discord with any questions!
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