We have reached the final slate of the year 2022 and what a better way to keep yourself awake for the ball drop than by sweating an Edmonton-Winnipeg game as the clock approaches midnight! Likely thanks to the schedule makers trying to avoid New Year's Eve festivities, many of the games for this Saturday have been pushed to earlier-than-normal start times. Typically, when this happens DraftKings does not offer one big slate and instead offer several small ones, and unfortunately that is the case tonight. Your options are a three-game slate at 1 pm EST, a four-game slate at 4 pm EST, or a 5-game slate at 7 pm EST. Since the 7 pm one is the featured/main slate and has the most games, that's where I'm going to focus my article for this week. The player prices are from DraftKings, but the information and concepts can be applied to any site.

Top-Tier Stack to Pay Up For

This may only be a five-game slate, but wow is it loaded at the top. Toronto, Colorado, Edmonton, and Dallas are all in action. If you're building multiple lineups, you can realistically spread things around to get a piece of each but if you're only building one lineup and need to decide – I'm going with Dallas here and their juicy matchup against a Sharks team who's allowed 24 goals over their last five games. Jason Robertson ($8,500) has cooled off recently, at least in terms of scoring goals, as he's only found the back of the net once since December 4. Despite that he's still managed nine assists in the last six games picking up at last one in each game. The shots and assists are there so don't be nervous to fire up Robertson here as the goals are surely to start coming again. Stack him with Roope Hintz ($6,700) who has had the scoring touch of late with five goals in the last four games and then Joe Pavelski ($5,400) and/or Miro Heiskanen ($5,200).

Mid-Tier Stack to Target

With so many top tier, high-priced stacks on this small slate we're going to be looking for value. I think we can find some with the Calgary Flames as their top two lines are significantly cheaper than some of those others. I'd look at Elias Lindholm ($5,700) and Tyler Toffoli ($5,700) to start and then add in either Dillon Dube ($4,000) who joins them at even strength or Nazem Kadri ($6,300) who is on the top power play with them. Only the Ducks, Blue Jackets, and Sharks have allowed more goals than the Canucks this season, which is who the Flames will be lining up against here.

Cheap Stack to Build Around

There aren't too many realistic punt options tonight for stacks with so few teams in action. The cheapest of the bunch that I like plays in Detroit. David Perron ($4,800), Michael Rasmussen ($3,700), and Moritz Seider ($4,500) give us a trio that see top line and top power-play minutes for just $13,000 in cumulative salary. That's a discount that will go a long way on such a tight slate. Naturally you're going to want to try and fit Dylan Larkin ($6,200) in with this stack but if leaving off Larkin means fitting someone like Connor McDavid (9,500) or Auston Matthews ($8,600) instead, I'm perfectly fine omitting him.

Goalies

I typically like to correlate my goalie in my lineups with one of my stacks, but if you're looking for a value standalone option, I'd consider Connor Hellebuyck ($7,300). If you're stacking any of the teams above and fading Edmonton anyway it's not a bad idea to go all-in and start the goalie going against them too. Hellebuyck has been great this season with a .926 save percentage and gets a bit of a boost tonight since Leon Draisaitl is likely to miss for the Oilers.  

Be sure to follow me on Twitter @SteveDotzel so you can follow my "DFS-NHL" list which is comprised of dozens of team accounts and beat writers providing important updates throughout the day. Best of luck with your lineups!