This post covers the eight-game slate of NHL contests on DraftKings starting at 7:00 p.m. ET.

Below I’ve got a discussion of the best matchups and potential stacks of the day followed by cash game rankings for DraftKings contests. At the bottom of the post I’ve embedded my research chart for the day. Here is just a snippet of the chart I’ll use to explain what you’re looking at.

First the colors. Blue is amazeballs, green is great, yellow is good, orange is bad, red is awful and deep red is no effing way.

The first column that isn’t self-explanatory is the fifth one, the one that is titled ‘z’ to the right of salary. That is how far above or below average the player’s salary is compared to all other players at his position in action today. Then we have ‘OPPz’ which is how far above or below average the player’s matchup is. Quality of matchup is determined with a mix of Corsi against and save percentage of the team the player will be facing. ‘Pts/Gm’ is a projection derived from numberfire.com’s rest-of-season projections. The ‘z’ next to the projection is how far above or below average the projection is compared to all other players at the position in action today. ‘zTOTAL’ is the player’s projection z-score combined with his matchup z-score. And then ‘zDIFF’ is zTOTAL minus the player’s salary z-score. The zDIFF column is really what we’re looking at.

Make sure to check Twitter for any injury news and line changes, and check Daily Faceoff for starting goalies.

Stack Options

This may be a tough day to find the teams that are going to hit it big. Of course, that’s hard to do every day because a lot of the time this thing feels like a total crapshoot. But some of the factors you usually look to in order to identify those teams aren’t as helpful today. The main problem is that none of teams we usually pick on are playing in this slate of games. No Edmonton, Buffalo, Toronto or Minnesota. The closest thing we have to a really good matchup is Ottawa’s matchup with Arizona. But it’s not much better than New York’s matchup against San Jose, who has been brutal defensively sans Joe Thornton, or St. Louis’ matchup against Carolina, especially when you consider that no team has scored more goals than the Blues in the last 45 days. All three of the teams with good matchups are basically dead even in Corsi for percentage over the last month and a half, and I prefer to choose from more dominating possession teams. But these are the choices we have.

Starting with Ottawa, both of their top lines are in play. Their first line works as their second power play unit, and two-thirds of their second line works on the top PP unit. I think the best play comes from the second line. Center Mika Zibanejad ($3,200, C) has the best value grade of any forward going tonight, and winger Bobby Ryan ($6,400, W) is the only Ottawa forward with a well above average per game projection. So that’s the best mini-stack from Ottawa. If you want to throw a defenseman in with them and you have the money, Erik Karlsson ($6,500, D) is the guy you want. If you want to go all in on an Ottawa stack in a GPP, add a first line stack of Kyle Turris ($5,500, C) with one or both of his wingers. Mark Stone ($3,500, W) is the value option, while Clarke MacArthur ($4,900, W) is a slightly safer bet to produce points. I prefer Stone to MacArthur.

With the Rangers both of the top two lines are again an option. For cash games, the price of Rick Nash ($8,300, W) is a little hard to work with. For that reason I prefer the second line for cash games. That’s Derek Stepan ($5,800, C), Martin St. Louis ($6,000, W) and Chris Kreider ($4,300, W). But I’m fine using any combination of the top two lines for a power Rangers stack. The first line is Nash, Derick Brassard ($5,200, C) and Mats Zuccarello ($4,800, W). If you’re looking for a defenseman from this team, I like Ryan McDonagh ($5,000, D) who plays on the second power play unit with Kreider and Zuccarello.

And then finally we have the offensive juggernaut that is the St. Louis Blues right now. As mentioned above, no one has scored more goals than the Blues in the last month and a half,  and they’ve scored 20 goals in their last three games. It’s classic gambler’s fallacy to think that because they’ve gone off the last few games they won’t go off again, but it does seem a little hard to believe they can stay on a run like this. But they do have one of the better matchups for scoring big.

Basically every time I write one of these articles I feel like the second line pair of Jori Lehtera ($3,500, C) and Vladimir Tarasenko ($6,800, W) is underpriced. That’s no different today, but I also like the other winger on that line today, Jaden Schwartz ($6,300, W). For cash games that’s the play. If you want to go all-in on Blues for a GPP and hope they score six or seven goals again, you could throw in the first line pair of David Backes ($7,300, C) and Alex Steen ($8,600, W). Their values aren’t great, but they’re not terrible like fellow linemate T.J. Oshie ($8,100, W), who I can’t justify using. If you’re just using the Lehtera line, you can add defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk ($6,800, D) who joins them on the top power play unit. If you’re using Backes at all, you can use Jay Bouwmeester ($3,200, D) to offset some of that expense.

Columbus also has a similarly good matchup, but they’re a well below average possession team, so I find it hard to trust them. If you like that matchup, the value stack is Brandon Dubinsky ($6,000, C) and Cam Atkinson ($4,100, W). The expensive upside stack is Ryan Johansen ($7,600, C) and Scott Hartnell ($5,300, W).

Price-Adjusted Cash Game Rankings

Center

Winger

Defense

Goalie

Goalies with an asterisk next to their name are second on their team’s depth chart, so don’t count on them playing. Any players in bold have been confirmed as the starter for the day. And players with a line through their name will not be starting tonight. Make sure you always check Daily Faceoff for starting goalie updates in case I am unable to update the list throughout the day.

Research Chart

You can download the research chart from this Google Sheet page here.