Spending up in any daily fantasy lineup is how to get the superstars and the highest upside players in your lineup.
In NHL DFS, it’s different from spending up in sports like NBA or NFL. Someone can be one of the highest salaried players at his position and put up a total dud of a performance, and paying that much for him would be a huge mistake. Let’s make sure we are spending salary in the right spots when building our lineups tonight.
Friday night has seven games on the schedule. Here are a few studs.
Jack Hughes, Center, New Jersey Devils
FanDuel Salary: $8,300
There is an understood risk as the New Jersey Devils head through the Holland Tunnel to face the New York Rangers on Friday night.
His name is Igor Shesterkin, and he is the projected starting goaltender and a potential Vezina/Hart Trophy candidate.
That being said, do the Rangers have the speed and discipline to slow down the roaring motor of Jack Hughes?
Our model projects Hughes to score just 11.5 points among skaters on Friday, but that could be a little low because Hughes has six straight games of 20 or more FanDuel Points. Not even Pittsburgh could slow him down, and they had two cracks at him.
This matchup has a few pieces to stack, too, including Damon Severson and Yegor Sharangovich. One can also counter with Mika Zibanejad from New York.
Nikita Kucherov, Wing, Tampa Bay Lightning
FanDuel Salary: $9,800
Slow starts from the Tampa Bay Lightning were quite a concern over the past several contests. Against Pittsburgh, it came back to bite Nikita Kucherov.
The Russian winger came off one of his worst games since he returned with just a couple of shots on goal. Worse, he only had one decent scoring chance all game long.
Do not expect any downturn to last very long. Kucherov followed a peculiar bagel against Arizona with four consecutive games with goals. He added an assist in each one of those contests, too.
This previous encounter between these two teams saw the winger snipe a goal and add three helpers en route to more than 51 FanDuel Points.
Adam Fox, Defenseman, New York Rangers
FanDuel Salary: $7,000
The New York Rangers blueliner is one of the best passers in the NHL -- period. He has 46 assists to prove it.
Adam Fox goes up against a New Jersey team that is just 8-17-2 on the road and gives up 3.57 goals per game overall (tied for 29th).
Though New Jersey's penalty kill is a respectable 81.4%, New York tends to always victimize it, led by Fox. This year, that man advantage ranks fourth at a 25.7% conversion rate.
Fox comes off a clutch three-assist night versus the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday with two shots and two blocked shots.
The Rangers' blueliner represents the best DFS option on Friday -- even better than Victor Hedman from Tampa Bay.
Chris Wassel is not a FanDuel employee. In addition to providing DFS gameplay advice, Chris Wassel also participates in DFS contests on FanDuel using his personal account, username chriswassel. While the strategies and player selections recommended in his articles are his/her personal views, he/she may deploy different strategies and player selections when entering contests with his/her personal account. The views expressed in his/her articles are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of FanDuel.