By the time you are reading this, I'll be en route to Pittsburgh for the Penguins-Ducks game tonight. While I'm not particularly a fan of either team, I'm not going to pass up a chance to spectate and sightsee around the city of Pittsburgh for the weekend. Unfortunately with Jake Guentzel, Bryan Rust, and Evgeni Malkin on the shelf, it'll be more like the AHL version of the Penguins but perhaps the Ducks could hook up for another alley-oop goal like they did on Friday. If you missed it, here's a link. Either way, it should be a good time.

As far as daily fantasy, some exciting news here at Dobber Hockey as a new Frozen Tool launched this week – the DraftKings DFS Player Evaluator. In its current state, this tool helps you find some top plays on the day, both in terms of overall and points per dollar. The latter really helps you identify some good value plays on the slate. Be sure to give it a look before building lineups and feel free to share some feedback on it.

A pretty hefty 11-game slate on tap for tonight so let's get to it. All prices are from DraftKings but plays can be applied to any site.

Primary Stacks

Toronto – After a slow start Auston Matthews ($9,200) has returned to the form that we saw for much of last season when he won the Rocket Richard Trophy. Matthews just saw his seven-game goal scoring streak come to an end, but that wasn't until after racking up ten goals during that stretch. He's a player you could play on his own but adding in Michael Bunting ($3,900) and/or Morgan Rielly ($6,200) gives you some correlation and that duo has combined for 16 assists over the Leafs' last seven games. Per Friday's practice Ondrej Kase ($3,800) looks to be sliding up to the top line as well and with already seeing PP1 time gives you another cheap stacking option. The matchup on home ice with the Blackhawks is certainly not one to fear which puts the second line of John Tavares ($7,200) and William Nylander ($7,300) firmly in play as well.

St. Louis – Montreal continues to struggle and enters Saturday's contest on a five-game losing skid. The Canadiens lead all teams in terms of shots allowed on the road, with an average of 36.6 per game. This combination leads me to believe the Blues should see a few extra scoring opportunities and be able to take advantage. St. Louis has played their last few games a bit shorthanded, rolling 11 forwards and seven defenseman which has led to their lines being all over the place. This continued at Friday's practice with a new set of lines and power-play units, which isn't ideal for our stacks. With this being the case I'm going to focus on the new line of Jordan Kyrou ($5,000), Brandon Saad ($4,200), and Ryan O'Reilly ($5,400) which gives us the Blues' top point producer (Kyrou) and top goal scorer (Saad) on the season thus far.

Anaheim – Well, if I'm going to be in attendance I might as well have some skin in the game. I touched on the injuries for the Penguins in the open but also working against them is the fact they'll be on a back-to-back after what is always an emotional and physical matchup with Washington. Also with Tristan Jarry starting Friday that likely means Casey DeSmith and his .885 save percentage on Saturday. This all sets up well for the Ducks who have been one of the surprise teams thus far in the season. Their best line and the one I'll be looking to stack here is Trevor Zegras ($6,700), Rickard Rakell ($6,000), and Sonny Milano ($4,400). The trio is also fully correlated on the power play, which we always like to see. 

Secondary Stacks

New York Islanders – Another team who will be on a back-to-back as well as it being their third game in four days are the Devils. Also with Mackenzie Blackwood starting both Wednesday and Friday I have to imagine the team will be turning to Akira Schmid in net for this one with Jonathan Bernier dealing with an injury. While Schmid has been superb in the AHL this season, it would still be his first taste of NHL action. The Islanders have been flat out awful, but they have shown some signs of life offensively with 13 goals in the last four games. I'll be targeting Anders Lee ($5,600) and Mathew Barzal ($6,200) but replacing Josh Bailey ($2,900) in stacks with Oliver Wahlstrom ($3,600) to give me more of a power play stack. Lee and Wahlstrom have each scored three goals over the past four games and Barzal has kicked in six helpers. 

Seattle – Attacking Columbus on the road has been a viable strategy all season as their 49 goals allowed in just 12 games can attest to. The challenge here will be deciding on which skaters for the Kraken to stack and coming off back-to-back losses, it wouldn't surprise me to see some line shuffling ahead of this one. Jaden Schwartz ($4,300) and Jordan Eberle ($4,500) lead the team in both points and shots and have been on the ice together at even strength of late so that's where I'll be starting my lineups. From there I'll add in Mark Giordano ($6,400) who's returned from a Covid absence to round out the stack. If Schwartz and Eberle were to be split up in warmups, I'll likely pivot Schwartz to whichever center is with Eberle.

Value Stacks

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

Claude Giroux ($,00), Cam Atkinson ($,00), Morgan Frost ($3,000)

T.J. Oshie ($4,100), Lars Eller ($3,100), Conor Sheary ($3,100)

Travis Boyd ($3,100), Phil Kessel ($3,200), Clayton Keller ($4,000)

Cheap Power Play 1 Plugs

C – Sean Monahan ($3,000), Kirby Dach ($3,000), Nick Bonino ($2,900)

W – Marcus Johansson ($2,700), Joonas Donskoi ($2,600), Mathieu Perreault ($2,500), Arthur Kaliyev ($2,500)

D – Jamie Drysdale ($4,000), Keith Yandle ($3,100), Kale Clague ($2,500)

Goalie Picks

Ilya Sorokin/Semyon Varlamov ($8,000)

John Gibson ($7,600)

Jake Oettinger ($7,600)

Petr Mrazek ($8,300)

Cam Talbot ($7,900)

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!