NHL

3 NHL FanDuel Studs to Target on Monday 11/8/21

In any daily fantasy lineup, 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 paying 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 paying up in the right spots when building our lineups tonight.

Monday night grants us three games on the NHL slate. Let's pick those studs!

Auston Matthews, Center, Toronto Maple Leafs

FanDuel Salary: $9,500

Auston Matthews has arisen! He has four goals and two assists in his previous three games. Also, the Toronto Maple Leafs' center gets a prime matchup versus the Los Angeles Kings on Monday who are missing Drew Doughty dearly.

Though Los Angeles has been pretty stingy at times when it comes to allowing goals, they can implode. There was that one time with St. Louis where they gave up seven.

The matchup is a pretty solid one, and Vegas has a margin of 0.81 goals here. Toronto's projected to score 3.09 goals to Los Angeles' 2.28.

Toronto should be one of the top teams to stack on this night. However, maneuvering salary will be a challenge. John Tavares and William Nylander expect to figure prominently.

Alex Ovechkin, Wing, Washington Capitals

FanDuel Salary: $9,400

The Washington Capitals winger has been incredible this season. As he rises up the all-time goal-scoring list, the Russian seems to age like fine wine.

Washington has the highest projected goal total of 3.37 against the Buffalo Sabres, per our model. That could even be conservative as Buffalo is starting to regress a bit after a hot, early start (0-3-1, 17 goals allowed in the last four games).

Look for usual suspects like Tom Wilson, Dmitry Orlov, and even John Carlson to supplement your stacks.

Aaron Ekblad, Defenseman, Florida Panthers

FanDuel Salary: $6,900

With Aleksander Barkov likely out of the lineup for the Florida Panthers, Aaron Ekblad will have to step up and help lead the Florida offense into a very angry atmosphere at Madison Square Garden. Florida faces a New York Rangers team that got blown away by Edmonton Oilers and then routed 6-0 by the Calgary Flames the next night.

Ekblad tops our projections with 13.4 points on Monday night. As an aside, pairing Ekblad with someone like Anthony Duclair could pay some dividends.


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.