The theme of last week's article was honing in on a few three- and four-player stacks we could mix and match to give us the 4-3-1, 3-3-1-1, or 3-3-2 lineup construction that was most prevalent among winning lineups in large field tournaments. It's a high-risk, high-reward strategy which lends itself well to the small buy-in, large payout format that comes with these types of tournaments.

Looking at the results from last Saturday, the first-place lineup in the DraftKings $15 Kick Save tournament which had 3,137 entries and paid out $10,000 to first place, looked like this.

This lineup utilized a 3 (Montreal) – 2 (Washington) – 2 (Nashville) – 1 (Calgary) construction on its way to claiming the first-place prize with a point total of 192.20. While not exactly the format I mentioned above, that doesn't mean a 4-3-1 stack wouldn't have done the trick. In fact had you taken the four-player Nashville stack referenced in this article last week with their goalie, the three-man Montreal stack referenced, and filled the one-off spot with the best available player in Cale Makar – you would have scored 183.0 points which would have been good enough to get you fifth place and the $700 prize that came along with it. Not bad for $15.

Of course, it's always easy to build winning lineups after the fact. It's landing on the right plays beforehand that's the hard part. Hopefully that's where I and the DraftKings DFS Player Evaluator over in the Frozen Tools can come in and help guide the way. Since last week worked out pretty well, I'm going to stick with the same format for this article in the hopes of landing on two stacks that mesh together well enough to reach the tops of the leaderboards. All prices are from DraftKings but plays can be applied to any site.

Four Player Stacks under $25,000

New York – The Rangers are coming off what many might consider their worst game of the season in what was a 6-2 loss to Blues on Thursday. In fact, coach Gerard Gallant called the performance "soft" and stated that the team should be "embarrassed".  I'd expect a better effort in this one and while the matchup against the Stars is mostly neutral, I'm banking on a bounce back. The top scoring threats of Chris Kreider ($6,700), Mika Zibanejad ($6,400), and Artemi Panarin ($6,000) combined with Jacob Trouba ($5,800) checks all the boxes in terms of correlation and price. Adam Fox ($6,200) over Trouba makes sense as well if you're willing to stretch the $25,000 ceiling ever so slightly.

San Jose – The Sharks and the Kings just met on Thursday in a game the Sharks came out on top 4-3 and the rematch will shift back to San Jose. Timo Meier ($7,900) has had a great season and despite not scoring a goal in the past five games he remains on over a point-per-game pace. With 24 goals on the year it's only a matter of time until he finds the back of the net once again and if that's the case tonight stacking him with Logan Couture ($5,100), Tomas Hertl ($5,500), and Brent Burns ($5,900) gives you a stack of four top-unit power-play skaters.

Tampa Bay – Edmonton pulled out a much-needed win on Thursday but that doesn't cover up the fact that they've allowed 15 goals over the past four games, including at least three in four straight games. Nikita Kucherov ($8,500) is priced up, but the rest of the Lightning power play comes in fairly affordable. Brayden Point ($6,800), Steven Stamkos ($6,500), and Alex Killorn ($4,000) are the forwards I speak of and make a nice stack but swapping in Mikhail Sergachev ($5,500) for one of Stamkos or Point gets the stack under the $25,000 threshold I found to be quite valuable.

Three Player Stacks to Mix In

Seattle – This might be the first time all season the Kraken make the article, as it hasn't been quite the year some were expecting from the expansion team. However there have been a few bright spots and Jared McCann ($4,200) has certainly been one. He comes in at a great price tonight as does Jordan Eberle ($3,700) and Jaden Schwartz ($3,800) who's recently returned. The trio all find themselves on the top power play which for a combined $11,700 is not easy to come by at that price.

Los Angeles – I touched on the other side of this game above but the Kings find themselves in a pretty good spot as well thanks to both of the Sharks starting goaltenders having landed on IR. Los Angeles has been shuffling things around lately but one thing you can always count on there is Anze Kopitar ($5,700) centering the top line and leading the power play. With Drew Doughty having missed Thursday's game Sean Durzi ($4,800) slid up to that top unit as well. To round out the stack look at Arthur Kaliyev ($3,100) who got some run with Kopitar on the top line and power-play unit on Thursday and won't cost you much.

Anaheim – This one is a bit tricky as the Ducks are dealing with a few injuries down the middle that has their lines and power plays jumbled. In their last game their traditional "second" unit led the way in ice time which is what I'm expecting again here. That means Adam Henrique ($4,800) and Cam Fowler ($4,700) stand to benefit and even if their unit does drop back down to second, Henrique is the de-facto top line center given the injuries. Round out the stack with Rickard Rakell ($4,500) or Troy Terry ($5,400).

The above six stacks can be mixed and matched together to create 4-3-1 lineups that have plenty of top power play exposure and have a high upside if things go your way. That lineup construction was the most prevalent among the winning lineups I recently reviewed.

Other Notable Three Player Stacks

Dylan Strome ($5,000), Alex Debrincat ($6,800), Patrick Kane ($7,200)

Patrice Bergeron ($7,500), Brad Marchand ($7,500), Taylor Hall ($5,000)

These two stacks can be added to the mix with the ones from above to create 3-3-2 or 3-3-1-1 lineups that were the second most prevalent lineup construction among the winning lineups I recently reviewed. The "2" and "1-1" pieces of the lineup could be plugs from below.

Cheap Power Play 1 Plugs

C – Tyler Johnson ($2,500), Pavel Zacha ($3,500), Ryan Strome ($3,900)

W – Nathan Bastian ($2,500), Marcus Johansson ($2,700), Alex Iafallo ($4,200)

D – Chris Wideman ($2,500), Esa Lindell ($3,800), John Klingberg ($4,500)

Goalie Picks

Jacob Markstrom ($8,400)

Jonathan Quick ($8,100)

Igor Shesterkin ($8,300)

Jeremy Swayman ($8,500)

There was not as much correlation as I expected between goalies and team stacks, so including them as part of your stack is not necessary. You're primarily looking for the win and two goals allowed or less. Obviously, that's tough to predict, so sticking with heavy Vegas favorites seems the most logical thing to do. Unfortunately outside of Boston and Calgary tonight, every game is nearly a pick 'em.

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!