DraftKings NHL DFS Picks: Fantasy Hockey Targets and Stacks For August 18

The NHL Playoffs continue on Tuesday, with the same matchups from the past week or two continuing on. The slate starts at 3:00 p.m. ET with the first game featuring the Philadelphia Flyers and the Montreal Canadiens, and ends with the 10:30 p.m. ET game between the Vegas Golden Knights and the Chicago Blackhawks. Both of those games are creating some notable insights, and you can see them in detail below.

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Top Stacks

Vegas Golden Knights

Chandler Stephenson ($3,300), Max Pacioretty ($7,400), Mark Stone ($7,000)

William Karlsson ($6,300), Jonathan Marchessault ($6,600), Reilly Smith ($5,600)

These two are really the same pick. The Golden Knights’ two best forward lines both draw excellent matchups once again against the Chicago Blackhawks, who are easily the most porous defensive team remaining in the playoffs. The Knights only managed one goal in their Game 4 loss, but that was mostly due to stellar play from Blackhawks goalie Corey Crawford, who stopped 38 of the 39 shots he faced.

It’ll be worth keeping an eye on the combinations themselves, as Knights’ center Paul Stastny ($4,500) missed Game 4, but could make a return for Game 5. If he does, these line combinations could look somewhat different and, with the game starting at 10:30 p.m. E.T., it’ll require some diligence to pay attention to what happens. Whatever the groups end up being, look for Vegas to once again get plenty of shots on goal.

Value Stacks

Vegas Golden Knights

Nicolas Roy ($2,900), Nick Cousins ($2,900), Alex Tuch ($4,100)

Keeping to the same theme, there’s another Knights line that’s worth considering as their third line of Roy, Cousins and Tuch has produced plenty of scoring chances this series. The difference here is that these guys are substantially cheaper than the players mentioned above, with a collective DraftKings price tag of only $9.9K. Cousins and Tuch have also been skating on the second power play unit, so there’s some added correlation with defensemen Alec Martinez ($4,500) and Nate Schmidt ($4,700).

Dallas Stars

Mattias Janmark ($2,800), Joe Pavelski ($4,200), Denis Gurianov ($3,400)

The Stars pulled off a miraculous come-from-behind win against the Calgary Flames in Game 4, evening up the series at 2-2. In that game, the Stars trailed 4-3 and scored the tying goal with less than a minute left, but the goal was overturned for goaltender interference. They ended up tying it again with 11 seconds remaining, and that goal ultimately stood up to yet another review (for offsides) and gave them a shot to win in overtime, which they took full advantage of.

The Stars continue to dominate puck possession in this series, which probably has a lot to do with Matthew Tkachuk being out of the lineup for the Flames. Tkachuk is a game-time decision tonight — so his return would hurt the productivity of this Stars second line — but Janmark-Pavelski-Gurianov is still too cheap a line for how well they’ve played, regardless.

Low Owned Combos

Vegas Golden Knights

Paul Stastny ($4,500), Max Pacioretty ($7,400), Mark Stone ($7,000)

Going back to the Knights once again, it seems worth reiterating that Stastny could be back in the lineup and he would create an interesting and potentially very low-owned pivot for the team’s best scoring line. Stastny, Pacioretty and Stone were probably the best group for Vegas in the 2019 NHL Playoffs, and having them reunited would make for an extremely appealing DFS stack. There’s no guarantee that this will be the line even if Stastny does play, but this is definitely a situation worth paying attention to.

Montreal Canadiens

Philip Danault ($3,500), Brendan Gallagher ($6,100), Tomas Tatar ($4,700)

The Canadiens shook their lines up late in their Game 3 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers, reuniting the trio of Danault, Gallagher and Tatar. This group was by far the Canadiens’ best line in the regular season, and it’s been somewhat strange to see them separated for most of the playoffs. If the Canadiens go back to this, it’ll probably catch many DFS players off-guard, as they only used this line for a few shifts at the tail end of Game 3. However, this is the first game on the slate, so unlike with the Golden Knights, it’ll be easy to monitor what the Canadiens are doing before lock. Stay tuned.

Set your DraftKings lineups here: NHL $60K Sticks [$15K to 1st]

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All views expressed are my own. I am an employee of DraftKings and am ineligible to play in public DFS or DKSB contests.