So, you want to play some DFS hockey, eh? I jumped into NHL DFS pretty hard last year for most of the season and without betting more than a few hundred a day on regular game slates, I won money. Let me walk you through some of the things I learned last year while playing NHL DFS.

The first thing to understand is that Vegas knows more than you. Vegas is the slang term we use to describe sports books as a general entity. Vegas has already done a good job of projecting the outcome of the game and if you can do it better than them, then you should be betting against Vegas and not reading this article. If you’re like me, then Vegas is smarter than you. Therefore, I’ll trust Vegas’ information and apply it to daily fantasy sports.

All things must be considered in context of the contest you are playing. A $20 head-to-head match should be approached much differently than a $20 Millionaire Maker contest on DraftKings where you need to beat hundreds of thousands of opponents. Head-to-head matches and 50/50 contests are called cash games and big-field contests with top-heavy payout structures are called GPPs.

Plenty of DFS sites offer hockey, so check it out at sites like DraftKingsand FanDuel.

Cash Game Strategy

When you only have to beat one guy or half the field, you want to make safe plays that will consistently score you points. Everything starts at goalie for me in cash games. Goalies score points by blocking shots (0.2) and winning games (3). They lose a point by giving up a goal and they get 3 bonus points for a shutout.

We want goalies who are likely to win and Vegas tells us who those guys are with the money lines. I want goalies from the biggest favorites of the night and then I choose the cheapest guy most likely to win the hockey game. If both goalies are -200 to win but one is 7k and the other is 8k, I’ll take the 7k guy. I don’t care about the names of either goalie or team.

I then want to create a diverse lineup of guys who spend a lot of time on the ice playing for teams that Vegas thinks will score a bunch of goals. I prefer to use Pinnacle Sports for my odds, as I feel they are the most accurate in the industry with their high volume. They offer team total bets and you can bet if a team will score more or less than 3.5 goals on most nights.

It’s hard to score 4 goals in the NHL, so I like to take guys from teams with team totals of 3.5. Once I run out of those guys, I look at guys from teams with team totals of 3 goals. And I want all these guys to be cheap. I prefer to pay up at goalie in cash games.

I like to print out all the Vegas lines and then write notes on it. I circle teams with high team totals and note teams that were heavy money line favorites to investigate their goalies. Now I just need to know who those players are.

I started with DailyFaceoff.com. They are excellent for their easy-to-use interface. Starting goalies are under one neat tab, with projections that evolve into confirmations of the goalie starting. Always make sure your goalie is starting. Even when confirmed, sometimes they get scratched late from getting hurt in warm-ups.

The next important tab is line combinations. Click on a team and you see their 4 offensive lines, 3 defensive lines, and the power play and penalty kill lines. We can assume that guys who skate on the first line will usually spend the most of the time on the ice. I also want skaters who skate on the power play. This is very important because way more fantasy points per minute are scored on the power play. I don’t want guys who skate on the penalty kill line because it tires them out with little opportunity to score fantasy points. Minutes equals opportunity which equals money.

For more advanced research, check out FantasyHockey911.com. They have the same info but different. It’s a bit more in-depth but a little harder to look at. I like them because they show ice times for every player and line for each game, a handy piece of information for DFS hockey. Then for even more in-depth research, check out NHL.com’s At the Rink Blog, which has day-of reports from beat writers who often are the first source of line shakeups.

I want safe guys for cash games, guys on the ice a lot on a team with a high team total, and guys who take a lot of shots. Look for recently promoted guys due to merit or injury for your value plays. The guys you skate with directly impacts how well can score fantasy points. If the guy across from my stick is Sidney Crosby, then I’m going to book more assists and score more goals as a result of the exceptional quality of Sidney’s shots and passes.

GPP Strategy

The last thing I am looking for in GPPs is a goalie.

First, I want to find combinations of skaters from the same line on the same team that is supposed to score a bunch of goals. The way to win GPPs is with goals, not a safe goalie. Using the same team total information, I like to look at the top 2 or 3 lines from teams expected to score a bunch of goals.

I’m not sure what is the optimal combination of players is, but I feel like 3 is the magic number because then you can go pass, pass, goal, scoring 7.5 points on one shot with one goal and 2 assists. If you have 4 in the stack, then one guy missed out. If you have 2 in the stack, then you missed some points.

I want my 2 or 3 skaters from the same team to skate on the same line and ideally skate on the same power play line as well. I like to write down potential 3-man combos and then note their price tag.

Sometimes I like to pair defensemen with my forwards. So, sometimes I have two 3-man combinations of forwards from 2 different teams with a pair of defensemen. Sometimes I have unique defensemen, but I always make sure they skate on the power play.

After my entire team is full of skaters, I take what money I have left and go looking for a goalie. I obviously want to leave myself as much money as possible for a goalie, but my priority in GPPs is upside. I want skaters who can score a bunch of goals; I’ll worry about the goalie later. And I want a goalie who maybe isn’t such a big favorite. The only way to score a bunch of points as a goalie is to block a bunch of shots. With reward comes risk, though, because sometimes some of those shots gets through.

Always remember to have fun and only play for as much money as you don’t care about losing. Keep the stakes small until you know what’s up. You’re a rookie, and that’s okay!