The second Saturday of the NHL season has arrived and while last week was fun, we really had yet to see a majority of the teams in action. Headed into this week, things are starting to feel a little more normal. Well except for the fact that Buffalo is 3-1-0 and Colorado is 1-3-0. But there's still plenty of time for that stuff to work itself out.

On the fantasy side, in my article last week I touched on two key points for your daily fantasy lineups – targeting players who shoot the puck and correlating the players in your lineups. Let's take a look at the lineup that took first place in the $15K Forecheck contest on DraftKings. This contest costs runs daily and is $4 to enter, limits each person to enter a maximum of 20 lineups, and usually has between 4,000 and 6,000 entries.  

Before getting into the specifics of the lineup itself, it's usually good practice to review the top lineups from the contests you are in on a daily basis. Seeing how top finishers constructed their lineups may show you a strategy that you wouldn't have otherwise considered.

For this particular lineup you can see Connor McDavid led the way. If you did read my article last week you would have seen him and the Oilers were the first stack listed. However, with McDavid at 31.5% ownership it was going to take much more than just rostering him to be successful on this night. This person used the full line stack so Leon Draisaitl and Jesse Puljujarvi made the lineup as well. And you can see their ownerships of 17.2% and 13.2% respectively are much lower than McDavid. This means that at most 13.2% of lineups rostered all three players together, but it's safe to assume the actual number is likely much lower than that. With those three players combining for 98.0 DraftKings points, it really shows the power of a stack when things go right.

Moving beyond the Edmonton trio, the next stack utilized in this lineup was from Carolina with Sebastian Aho, Jesperi Kotkaniemi, and Frederik Andersen. Aho and Kotkaniemi both skake on the top line together for the Hurricanes. Andersen is obviously the goalie and correlating your goalie with one of your stacks is often times a viable strategy. If you think about it, for your lineup to do well your stacks are going to have to do well. If they do well, that means their team is scoring goals which means the goalie should be in line for a win as long as he isn’t giving up too many goals himself. In this scenario the stack of Aho and Kotkaniemi really didn't provide much value to the lineup with only 14.9 points, but it did pay off in the sense it got this person on Andersen whose 28.6 points were one of the top scores of the night between the pipes.

The remaining three spots in this lineup were one-offs. And by that, I mean skaters who are the only player from their team to make the lineup. Some things all three of these one-offs have in common, however, is that they are affordable (all under $4,300) and they all see power-play time, which inherently gives them a little more upside. I give my own cheap power play one-offs at the bottom of each article to help you identify players like these. My last takeaway from this group is that both Alexis Lafreniere and Justin Faulk took five shots, which gave them the very important three point DraftKings bonus for five or more shots on goal. Those bonus points can go a long way and are part of the reason why targeting players who are going to be shooting the puck is important.

Hopefully by reviewing this lineup, you can see that some of the strategy I talk about can pay off when things go right. Now let's get into tonight's slate and try to build a first-place tournament lineup of our own. All prices are from DraftKings but plays can be applied to any site.

Primary Stacks

Toronto – As if Pittsburgh wasn't depleted enough without Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin now the team is battling Covid as well. As a result, Jeff Carter will also be out of the lineup Saturday, meaning the Penguins will be without their top three centers for this contest. Tristan Jarry is also expected to miss and Bryan Rust is on the shelf for a few weeks too. You don't need much of an excuse to roster Auston Matthews ($8,700) anyway, but against a team as depleted as Pittsburgh, Matthews should be able to pay off that high price tag. Mitch Marner ($7,800) is the preferred stacking partner here, but Matthews can do so much scoring on his own I often don't mind pairing him with someone much cheaper such as his other linemate Nick Ritchie ($3,700) or a defenseman such as Morgan Rielly ($6,400) or Jake Muzzin ($4,500).

New York Islanders – The Coyotes appear to be this year's team that you just stack against every time they're on the slate. In four games this season the team is 0-4 and have allowed a staggering 22 goals. This is game five of a brutal 13-game road trip to start the season for the Islanders, but given what we've seen from the Coyotes thus far this seems like a good spot for New York to get their season back on track. The top line duo of Mathew Barzal ($6,700) and Anders Lee ($7,500) are the two options I want the most and will add on Kyle Palmieri ($4,300) to some stacks also. Don't be afraid to drop down to the Islanders second line as well, as Brock Nelson ($4,900), Anthony Beauvillier ($4,700), and Josh Bailey ($4,200) are much more affordable and are capable of big scores themselves.

Florida – The Panthers have come out of the gates looking all the part of the playoff team many expected could take the next step this season. The goaltending has been a pleasant surprise but the offense has managed at least four goals in all four games this season as well. Aleksander Barkov ($7,600) if not already is becoming one of the league's best centers and so much of the offense goes through him. The Panthers aren't the best team to stack because Barkov's linemates of Carter Verhaeghe ($6,000) and Anthony Duclair ($3,800) don't join him on the same power play. In cases like this it's okay to get a little weird and add in someone like Sam Bennett ($5,500) or Jonathan Huberdeau ($5,300) to a Barkov stack, even though they skate on a different even-strength line. I'd be sure to consider Aaron Ekblad ($7,100) for any Florida stacks as well, though his price tag is getting a bit out of hand.

Secondary Stacks

New Jersey – The Sabres have gotten off to a surprisingly great start considering their expectations coming into the season, but it's hard to imagine they can keep up their winning ways for too long. They go from a home matchup with Boston on Friday to a road matchup at New Jersey on Saturday. I think the Devils, who have scored four goals in two of their first three games, should get the better end of this one. With Jack Hughes out of the lineup, the top line of Nico Hischier ($5,800), Pavel Zacha ($5,400), and Jesper Bratt ($4,300) is my preferred target as they are share top power-play time as well. You can make it a four-man stack or replace one of Zacha or Bratt with Dougie Hamilton ($6,800) for some added upside.

Colorado – Unlike the Panthers, the Avalanche haven't got off to quite the start many expected. Maybe luckily for them, neither has Andrei Vasilevskiy who has given up 17 goals in just four games. I am sure the former Vezina winner will return to form sooner than later, but so should Colorado and this could be a good time to stack the Avs in a spot where not too many people are going to play them. The matchup and price tags should scare most off of the top line of Nathan MacKinnon ($8,300), Mikko Rantanen ($8,100), and Gabriel Landeskog ($6,700), but this line has one of the highest ceilings in the entire sport so they are always worth a sprinkle if they're going to go under owned like I suspect they do in this one.

Value Stacks

Here a few affordable stacks you can use to round out your lineups:

Nick Suzuki ($5,300), Mike Hoffman ($4,300), Brendan Gallagher ($4,300)

Tyler Toffoli ($5,400), Cole Caufield ($4,900)

Yanni Gourde ($4,300), Jordan Eberle ($4,900), Jaden Schwartz ($3,300)

Brayden Schenn ($5,400), Jordan Kyrou ($5,100)

Cheap Power Play 1 Plugs:

C – Gourde ($4,300), Christian Dvorak ($3,900), Evan Rodrigues ($3,300), Boone Jenner ($3,800)

W – Hoffman ($4,300), Matt Duchene ($3,400), Schwartz ($3,300), Jason Zucker ($2,700)

D – Nate Schmidt ($4,000), Noah Dobson ($3,900), Keith Yandle ($3,600)

Goalie Picks

Ilya Sorokin ($8,300)

Connor Hellebuyck ($8,000)

Elvis Merzlikins ($7,300)

Andrei Vasilevskiy ($7,800)

Darcy Kuemper ($7,600)

Be sure to double check your lineups before lock for any last-minute scratches or goalie changes. If you follow me on Twitter @SteveDotzel you can subscribe to my "DFS-NHL" list, which is comprised of several team beat writers tweeting the most recent news in real-time. You can also reach out to me personally and I'll do my best to answer any questions I can. Hope to see you on top of the leaderboards!