for newbies looking to try hockey, here are some tips...
hopefully, by november you'll be a little more educated.
#1 try and do what winners do.
are they organized more than other players? yep.
now, you don't need 17 spreadsheets of every little thing, but maybe a spiral notebook to keep track of stuff wouldn't hurt.
alot of newbies pick players with 15 minutes to lock and have no clue what they're doing to fill the last couple slots.
winners know exactly what to do at crunch time because they have notes on what works and what doesn't.
during the playoffs in hockey, i trusted projections from rotowire and got burned badly the 1st couple playoff days because their projections included players that weren't on playoff rosters. i started looking at my line ups of players that had zero points and found that they weren't even on the roster for that round of the playoffs. after a few days of that, i had a list of low priced players that i could use instead of someone else projections i trusted.

#2 do your own research. having the fantasycruncher tool is awesome, but remember it's a tool and not a god given right to print money by using it's projections. (i don't work for them, i just love their product) over the summer, i tracked baseball projections from fantasycruncher, rotowire, numberfire, last 10 game stat averages, home/away averages, and a few more to see what was best and what sucked
as an example for today... setting up my tracking of goalies for 10/7/15 number fire doesn't even have ramo for calgary listed in goal on their projections and it's 2:00 eastern. if you use the calgary goalie they have listed, you're sunk.
keeping track of stuff like that for a month will let you know who to trust and who or what to always double check before making your final roster decisions.

#3 spend 30 days tracking goalies. if you want to get better, start tracking some data.
how does rotowires best 3 projected goalies stack up against something from rotogrinders, or the top 3 goalies based on vegas lines.
is the best value goalie actually any good? track it for 30 days and maybe the projections say 3.9 points with a low salary goalie, but you find out that half the time you're only getting about 2.4 points and some days that value goalie gets you negative points on draftkings.

#4 google "last change rule in hockey"
if there is a stoppage in play and then the big salaried offensive players you used are on the road, the home team gets "last change" to match up their best defensive line against your studs to crush your hopes and dreams of a nice point total. some times the #2 road team offensive line gets alot more fantasy points than the #1 line because they'll end up against the lesser home defensive line.

#5 go nuts and try and enter 50 different actual lineups. i hear people always saying "the pros enter tons of lineups, someday i'll be like them."
ok, pick a night and just enter 50 free head to heads or 50/50's. the amount of stress from checking injuries, starting goalies, and who is even in the starting lineup can drive you nuts on just a few rosters let alone 50. now take that stress and just think of it multiplied times 180 nights over a 6 month period. sometimes your best lineup or maybe 3 to 5 of your best can ease the stress load.
try the 50 and see if your heart can take it and see what scores you get based on missing injuries or whatever right before lock time.

#6 the devil invented higher rake. gpp's are usually 13-17 percent. double ups are usually 13 percent, while 50/50's and head to heads are 10 percent. people have no clue how much this can drain your bankroll over time. it's like someone named "50/50" orders something on amazon.com and pays $10 for shipping and handling while someone named "double up" pays $13 for shipping and handling on the same product, over time that money is going to add up. don't be afraid to play mostly 50/50's and keep the extra change in your pocket and not draftkings.

#7 finding values.
i like to pay up for top 5 goalies each time, so i'm looking to save some salary space when i can.
for centers the other night we had sydney crosby who figured to be highly owned at $7,500 salary.
i saw kyle turris projected at about the same points with a $5,500 salary.
turris plays on ottawa who was favored by vegas to win the game over buffalo, while crosby's team was not.
winning teams score more than losing teams as they say.
as i looked at my goalie rankings, i saw buffalo's goalie was last of all 14 teams that night. (advantage ottawa)
i locked in kyle turris and had a good value play at center with high scoring chances and saved $2,000 in salary with a little digging.
as it turned out, turris got me 8 points while crosby got a not so good 1 point for his users.
stuff like this happens all the time if you just spend a few minutes more to find value instead of just taking studs and then using scrubs to fill out a few slots because you ran out of salary.

#8 vegasinsider.com
they have all the vegas lines as well as probable goalies.
on their matchups page today (saturday 10/10) tampa bay/ buffalo was the early game with an over under set at 5.5
i quick look before lock showed the betting trends had 75% of the money on tampa bay and 65% on the over.
would info like that sway your mind while filling out lineups? it helps me.
on the teams page, you can see the full schedule at a glance.
i always want to know if a team is playing back to back nights or 2 games in 3 days with travel.
i write down upcoming situations where you get a rested home team against a tired road team.
>> on the home page of vegasinsider if you scroll all the way down to the bottom right hand corner, you'll see "rotation schedules"
click on that and you'll get what is printed by sports books for their gamblers.
it has each game, each night with room to put scores and vegas lines in it.
this is in pdf format which can go straight to a printer if you're hooked up to one.
october 7th all the way thru novermber 11th is what's available now.

#9 teams don't win games by scores of 3.26 to 2.49
another thing about gambling and research is that everyone gets prediction happy and trusts the averages that get spit out.
as the season rolls along, people's projections end up looking like 3.26 to 2.49.
on vegasinsider, it's easy to see after half a season that your team on the road (let's say 20 games) has 10 games where they scored 1 goal or less and 10 where they scored 2 or more. let's say they crushed 2 teams 7-1 and 8-5 on the road.
those averages of the big scores jack up that road scoring average whereas knowing 10 times of 20 games, they scored 1 goal or less is a better representation of what they might do tonight against a good team with a top 5 goaltender and their on their 2nd game in back to back nights.
i know this sounds like alot of working keeping track of all this, but instead of spending saturday night watching hockey in a sports bar with a plateful of chicken wings and a girl with big boobs behind a bar, spend one of them every once in awhile at home in a nice quiet room where you can concentrate on getting better at fantasy hockey.

#10 what the heck is a decision tree?
well, it's a thought process that helps you narrow down the stats that matter.
on youtube, search "decision tree 1 how it works" by victor lavrenko and watch it for 10 minutes
or click here... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKD5gxPPeY0
the problem they use is if someone will play tennis on that day based on certain variables.
so now let's say you took fantasy crunchers top 15 projected points players and their top projected value players each day for 2 weeks.
the next day you look up the actual points scored on lineup rewind.
make a decision tree and start sorting with questions for branches...
did the best of the 15 players play at home or on the road?
did they play on the power play?
did they play against a team whose vegas projected goals score was in the bottom half of all the teams playing?
after tracking that for awhile you'll notice stats you thought were good to use aren't nearly as good as others.
as an example during baseball, fantasycruncher was way better than my numbers on value hitters of $3,500 or less.
after i did a decision tree on some things i found out that the big difference was that a little less than half of my value hitters were in batter slots 6-9.
if you look at the top value plays for cruncher in baseball (that score 8 points a night which is great for a sub $3,500 salary) pretty much all of them are in batter slots 1-5.
sometimes you just don't know what has been staring you in the face for a long time and you didn't realize it.
now i'm a decision tree making son of a gun.

#11 need lineups & goalies with salaries along with vegas over-unders with projected goals scored?
how about what lines they play on including power plays?
go here... https://rotogrinders.com/lineups/nhl?site=draftkings

#12 rotogrinders also has more resources to check our here... https://rotogrinders.com/offers/nhl?site=draftkings
take a peak at their daily skater hub, nhl team stats, and vegas odds & lines page (with projected goals that are sort-able)
lots of good stuff to look at or get lost into. data overload can get tricky.
that's another reason that tip #10 is valuable while sorting thru what data is worth something or not.

#13 using averages or using mid-ranges?
here's what my actual points scored by my #1 projected goalie look like thru the 1st 10 days.
6.2 0.6 5.0 2.2 7.2 -2.6 11.2 7.8 7.0 9.2
this averages out to 5.38 points per game.
the salary used was $77,500 for 10 days to average 7.75K per day
remember these are strictly draftkings numbers (not fanduel)
so aiming for a 30.0 score at $50k salary, you want to get 0.6 points for every 1k you use in salary.
7.75k times 0.6 pts. equals 4.65 points your golie needs to score per night with that average salary.
well, the average looks good for me because i'm averaging 5.38 per night.
let's look at the mid-range instead of the average by sorting the scores top to bottom...
11.2 9.2 7.8 7.2 7.0 6.2 5.0 2.2 0.6 -2.6
so 5 times in 10 nights, my goalie got me 7.0 points or higher and 5 nights it got 6.2 or lower.
also 7 of 10 times it got me above the 4.65 points needed to "be above value" based on projections.
just for reference, 5 salaries were from 7.1k to 7.5k and 5 were 7.7k to 8.4k
sometimes averages don't give you the clearest picture on what's going on.

#14 more thoughts on value, value, value...
so for me, those goalie salaries will stay about the same all year long because i pay up for good goalies.
with that in mind, on draftkings that leaves me with 8 players left to pick and i'm hoping to get over 25 points from about 42.5k in salary which brings it under the 0.6 points per $1k spent line.
go back and look at tip #7 where i saved $2k in salary on my center instead of taking sydney crosby that night.
if you can find 2 to 3 value plays every night to plug into your lineup especially someone under $3k and one from 3k to 5k, you'll be able to use alot of the players you want in lineups and won't get shut out on salary cap limits.
fantasycruncher has a column with value based on their projected points totals.
if you haven't used the changeable projection numbers, notice what a 3.5 points value is and then change that projected number to 8.0 and then see the value number jump up. when you change your projected value fields, the values change automatically.
keep track on if the player you want is a value of 0.40 instead of someone who might be rated at 0.80.
remember that on draftkings a value of 0.6 points per 1k in salary will get you a score of 30.0 points on the night. (which will give you the cashes you'll need to stay ahead in the game)

#15 try and learn a little bit from everyone. don't just take one guys word for it.
try different things and research one or two new things each month if you have time. (or 10, LOL)
last hockey season, i didn't even start playing daily hockey until about late february.
i learned alot and kept my head above water and spent time over the off season looking up different things that may relate fantasy hockey to fantasy baseball.
so far thru the 1st 10 days of hockey "last years best system" got me nightly scores of...
42.2 33.5 27.8 26.2 28.4 43.7 18.7 29.5 29.6 17.2
my newer improved system came up with nightly scores of...
31.7 30.5 29.8 39.2 38.9 28.7 29.2 35.0 21.6 42.2
of the 1st 10 nights, the new system scored more on 6 of 10 nights.
old system scored 29.5 or higher on 5 nights and 28.4 or lower on 5 nights
new system scored 31.7 or higher on 5 nights and 30.5 or lower on 5 nights
old system had five 50/50 cashes in 10 nights.
new system had eight 50/50 cashes in 10 nights.
never stop learning and never stop trying new things.
i will say that i was using rotowires optimizer along with my research last season.
now i'm using fantasycruncher and it has helped with my research and time spent looking up things.

i hope you guys are finding some of this useful.
as mary chapin-carpenter once sang...
the stars might lie, but the numbers never do, i feel lucky today