A mid-summer daily fantasy hockey primer to help you take advantage of the Dobber Draft Kings deal …

After a beefy throwdown in relief yesterday, I thought it might be fun to look at a few daily fantasy hockey strategies. Dobber has the great Draft Kings offer out, and hopefully some of you taken advantage of it. I'll add a few links to other articles at the bottom, too.

Starting points

Know your contest, settings and pay attention to the finer details.

Particular players are better suited to different sites and contests. Counting stats such as blocked shots can be a major difference maker in your selection process, whereas plus/minus rating is an entirely different consideration. You'll want to assemble safer lineups for cash contests with fewer fliers. In GPP contests, variance and high-risk, high-reward players can pay of significantly.

It is a matchup game

Finding teams to target is critical, and it is alright to cherry-pick. After all, matchups aren't created equally. Look for road teams on the wrong end of back-to-back games or clubs who struggle to kill penalties. Backup goalies, especially weak ones, are prime teams to pick on and clubs littered with injuries, too. Take the time to find weaknesses to exploit to stay ahead of the competition.

Begin in goal

On occasion a skater will be the highest scorer of the night, but the majority of time it is a goaltender. And while selecting the right goaltender rarely will win a contest, when you select the wrong goalie, you'll lose every time. The selection process varies, as you can look for an upset candidate, a goalie likely to face plenty of pucks or the heavy favorite of the night. Regardless, you want to build your lineup around your goalie.

And price should never be an obstacle when selecting your goaltender. If you have to pinch pennies or force a pick within a select price range, make that player a defenseman. The floor is lowest and the ceiling is highest with goaltenders.

The value hunt

Expect daily sites to improve their salaries For the 2015-16 season, as they were easily exploitable last year, especially at certain points in the season. However, the paths to finding cap relief will likely remain the same. You'll want to look for players being promoted up the lineup in season, but to begin the year, there may be players in new settings who present value. Weigh the opportunity and ice time the player is receiving in comparison to their cap hit.

Target high-end talents

If you're not careful, you'll end up with an entire team of second-tier talents. Lock in a pair of high-priced forwards with favorable matchups and build around them. Contest-winning upside is difficult to find, but there are endless supporting pieces at reasonable salaries to fill out your roster. Goal scorers in particular are a huge priority, as goals are worth the most points.

Minutes equal opportunities

Simple, I know, but it is easy to finesse and get cute with lineup fillers and next thing you know you've got a defenseman on the No. 2 power-play unit who plays under 20 minutes per game. Make no mistake, utilizing cheap defensemen is a worthwhile cap-relief strategy. Still, counting stats are the quickest path to fantasy points — blocked shots, shots, etc — especially for rearguards.

Ryan Suter is a fitting example, he is always priced in the second or third tier among his peers, but he usually puts a few pucks on net and blocks a shot or two with huge minutes. You don't produce fantasy points from the bench, so the more ice time a player receives the more opportunities he has to post points for your daily lineup. This works with forwards, too.

Spending up for power-play quarterbacks

On lightly scheduled nights (four or five games), it is more viable to target top-tier defensemen and spend up for them. With 10 games on the schedule, it is easier to find value and the significance of securing the right forwards increases. With fewer games, there are fewer goals and increasing your exposure to them is important and can be achieved by rostering offensive defensemen.

Quick-hit strategies

The Third Wheel: A lot of coaches stick to duos — Jakub Voracek and Claude Giroux, Ryan Getzlaf and Corey Perry, Nicklas Backstrom and Alexander Ovechkin, Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin — and grabbing their cheaper linemate is often a recommended value play. However, those players are reliant on the stars for scoring, and if they're shifted off the line, their upside plummets. Be careful with chasing the third wheel.

Special teams: The best players are often at their best with the man advantage, and they become lineup priorities when they face teams with a weak penalty kill. Additionally, if you're deciding between high-priced players, a difference maker is the opposition's penalty-kill success. Look out for promotions to a power-play unit, or from the No. 2 to the No. 1 unit, too, which is fairly obvious, but worth noting.

It is alright to spend below the cap: Just because you have an allotted budget doesn't mean you have to spend to it every night. Sometimes spending up isn't spending wiser. It feels icky to have available money, but if you trust your selection process and are comfortable with your roster, let it fly. If you've got a few thousands dollars left, though, you might want to re-evaluate.

Zone starts: One way to find cheap defensemen, which again is an excellent cap-relief strategy at times, is to look for defensemen who receive protected minutes and start the majority of their shifts in the offensive zone. It is another tiebreaker option for all skaters, too.

Cheap centers: You'll often find plenty of viable centers at a reasonable cost, as just like year-long fantasy hockey, center is the deepest position in daily, too. Thrifty spending at center can open up cap space to spend on wingers and defensemen. Even if you only go cheap with one center it can go a long way to building a balanced lineup, which can be especially important in cash contests.

Links

Mike wrote an awesome introduction to daily fantasy hockey last September, which I highly recommend reading.

Here are a number of things to consider when starting out this fall and tips to set you up for daily fantasy hockey success.