NHL

3 NHL FanDuel Studs to Target on Wednesday 1/12/22

Auston Matthews gets to go home on Wednesday night. Which other studs stand out on the short slate?

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.

Wednesday night has three games in all. It is time to look at a few studs!

Auston Matthews, Center, Toronto Maple Leafs

FanDuel Salary: $10,200

Arguably, the play of the slate focuses on Auston Matthews. Matthews is on one of those crazy goal-scoring runs again with 13 coming in his last 11 games. He has 23 overall on the season along with 14 assists.

The projection for Matthews is fourth among all skaters at 16.0 points on Wednesday night. That feels like it could be a little low.

Matthews has generated three-plus scoring chances in seven straight games. The forward is going up against the worst team in the NHL -- the Arizona Coyotes. This is a Coyotes team that has allowed a league-worst 128 goals and could be without several players due to COVID protocols. That also includes a head coach and an assistant as well.

Stacking options are plentiful here with the Toronto Maple Leafs. There is John Tavares, Ondrej Kase, and Morgan Rielly just to start.

David Pastrnak, Wing, Boston Bruins

FanDuel Salary: $8,100

David Pastrnak is back ladies and gentlemen!

He benefits from a great matchup versus the Montreal Canadiens who have not played since,*checks notes*, January 1st.

Montreal has won just once in their last ten games and Pastrnak is a known Montreal killer throughout the years. Lately, he has 35+ FanDuel point games in consecutive contests. He is on a line with Taylor Hall and Erik Haula, which could prove to be a nice line stack for Wednesday.

The Boston Bruins winger will be in heavy rotation on Wednesday and do not worry -- he will still see top power-play time with Hall correlation as well. Pastrnak is an excellent option.

Miro Heiskanen, Defenseman, Dallas Stars

FanDuel Salary: $5,700

The Dallas Stars face a team that bleeds goals in the Seattle Kraken on Wednesday night at home.

Miro Heiskanen will be a fraction cheaper in salary compared to Morgan Rielly and Charlie McAvoy. He may even outperform his counterparts.

Heiskanen has four goals and 17 assists this season. He is expected to carry a good deal of the offensive load going forward as John Klingberg gets phased out of the lineup.

The Dallas defenseman has 79 shots on goal in 31 games. Expect that number to start trending upward. He also has double-digit FanDuel points in four straight appearances.

There are stacking possibilities here too. Jason Robertson and Roope Hintz make sense among Dallas forwards.



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.