NHL DraftKings DFS: Main Slate (October 20, 2026)

Tuesday, October 20: 11 games, with the DraftKings main slate beginning at 7 p.m. ET. Our preferred construction starts with one premium scoring anchor, then buys correlation through Washington and the Islanders rather than forcing expensive names into every slot.

Connor McDavid is our first spend-up. Dylan Strome, Cole Caufield, Lane Hutson and Simon Holmstrom complete the initial core pool. That is a selection pool, not five mandatory players in every lineup. The best tournament build depends on which stack you commit to and which starting goalies are confirmed.

Morning edition: Salaries and roster eligibility below are from this slate’s DraftKings export. Line and power-play assignments are the latest available projected combinations, primarily dated October 19, not confirmed warmup lines. Our goalie recommendations distinguish a coach-announced starter from unconfirmed options. Recheck those roles before each player’s game locks.

The short list

• Core: McDavid $9,200, Strome $5,100, Caufield $7,400, Lane Hutson $5,600 and Holmstrom $3,000.
• Premium stack: McDavid + Leon Draisaitl $8,700. Draisaitl is wing-eligible in this DraftKings slate.
• Balanced stack: Strome + Alex Tuch $6,800 + Jordan Kyrou $3,900.
• Value stack: Bo Horvat $6,700 + Holmstrom, with Kyle Palmieri $4,700 as the third piece.
• Other salary relief: Zack Bolduc $2,700, Arseny Gritsyuk $3,200 and Bradly Nadeau $2,900.
• Goalies: Jake Oettinger $7,400 and Ilya Sorokin $7,500 only if confirmed. Daniil Tarasov $7,200 is the coach-announced tournament alternative. Logan Thompson $8,400 is the conditional pay-up option.

Why McDavid is the first premium decision

McDavid entered this matchup with 23 points in eight games, according to Edmonton’s game preview. That does not make his recent scoring pace a reasonable single-game projection. It does make fading him purely to spread salary around a decision that needs an offensive alternative, not just nine comfortable prices.

Edmonton’s latest projected units put McDavid, Draisaitl and Vasily Podkolzin together at even strength and on the first power play. Evan Bouchard is on that power-play unit as well. The overlap is the appeal: a goal can pay multiple roster spots without requiring separate scoring events.

McDavid–Draisaitl costs $17,900. Adding Bouchard at $7,700 takes that commitment to $25,600, leaving $24,400 for six positions. We prefer the two-man pairing unless the value pool is strong enough to support the third piece. Podkolzin at $6,200 is a correlation choice, not a bargain-bin substitute. Do not pay that salary merely because his linemates are famous.

Minnesota is not a matchup to treat as a free square. Our choice is to prioritize Edmonton’s concentrated scoring access, not to predict a rout. In lineups using the Edmonton stack, we are not also paying for the opposing goalie.

Three stacks that let the rest of the lineup breathe

Washington: Strome, Tuch and Kyrou

The trio costs $15,800. Washington’s projected chart has them together at even strength. It separates Strome on PP1 from Tuch and Kyrou on PP2, so this is not a three-player first-power-play stack.

That distinction matters. Kyrou’s $3,900 salary lets us buy the full even-strength combination without requiring every goal to come with a man advantage. Strome is the first piece for balanced builds; Kyrou is the economical attachment; Tuch is the piece that turns the pair into a full line bet.

Los Angeles entered with a 61.9% penalty kill, per Washington’s preview. It is an early-season sample, not a stable forecast. For a specifically power-play-focused build, we would use Strome with Alex Ovechkin $5,800 or Jakob Chychrun $7,000 rather than pretending the original trio shares every special-teams shift.

Islanders: Horvat and Holmstrom, with Palmieri optional

Horvat–Holmstrom costs $9,700; all three cost $14,400. The projected Islanders units support the even-strength trio and first-unit power-play access for Holmstrom. That gives the $3,000 winger two possible routes to connect with the offense.

Holmstrom is our favorite salary-saving attachment, not a player who should be treated as safe because he is cheap. If he loses the scoring-line role, this recommendation changes. The salary works because of the opportunity alongside Horvat, not because a minimum-price goal is easy to predict.

We prefer the two-player mini-stack when keeping McDavid or Caufield. Palmieri is useful when committing more heavily to an Islanders scoring outcome, rather than adding a fourth unrelated one-off.

Montreal: Suzuki and Caufield, with a cheaper power-play route

Nick Suzuki $6,900 and Caufield $7,400 total $14,300. Their latest projected roles overlap at even strength and on PP1. Lane Hutson $5,600 is our preferred defenseman attachment.

Bolduc at $2,700 offers a different construction. The current projection places him on PP1 but on a separate even-strength line. Caufield–Hutson–Bolduc therefore costs $15,700 and is a power-play bet, not a full forward-line stack. We prefer that route when needing a cheap winger rather than treating Bolduc as Suzuki’s regular linemate.

San Jose, Toronto, Anaheim and Colorado played Monday, according to the NHL’s October 19 game list. Montreal’s home matchup against a team on consecutive nights is a supporting factor, not a substitute for checking the Sharks’ actual goalie and lineup.

Values with a reason to be in the lineup

Gritsyuk $3,200: The Devils’ most recent lineup chart, based on October 17, has him with Jack Hughes and Jesper Bratt at even strength, on PP2. This is a conditional line-role play until the morning skate updates it. The appeal is retaining access to Hughes and Bratt, not assuming a cheap salary guarantees production.

Nadeau $2,900: Carolina’s projected chart puts him with Logan Stankoven and Jackson Blake, with second-unit power-play work. He is a useful late-window value if that assignment survives. He is not an Aho first-unit stack piece, and we would not claim top-unit minutes at this price.

Bolduc versus Holmstrom: The $300 savings on Bolduc is not automatically worth giving up Holmstrom’s projected even-strength attachment. Choose Bolduc when building the Montreal power-play angle. Choose Holmstrom when building around Horvat or when that scoring-line role is the preferred source of value.

These are role-dependent recommendations. The export includes many players who will not dress. A blank injury cell is not confirmation of availability, and an inexpensive salary does not validate a lineup role.

Defense: choose the stack first

Lane Hutson $5,600 is our preferred middle-priced offensive attachment to Montreal. Bouchard $7,700 is the premium Edmonton extension. Chychrun $7,000 fits a Washington PP1 construction. Those are three different lineup decisions, not three defensemen we need to squeeze together.

Miro Heiskanen $6,100 gives a separate option: Dallas projects him on PP1. Thomas Harley $4,100 is the cheaper alternative on PP2. The $2,000 savings is useful, but it comes with a different special-teams role. We would rather acknowledge that trade-off than label Harley a like-for-like bargain.

For a Colorado tournament pivot, Nathan MacKinnon $9,500 with Artturi Lehkonen $5,200 costs $14,700. The latest Colorado chart keeps them together at even strength but splits them across power-play units. Cale Makar $7,500 is the PP1 attachment to MacKinnon. We prefer a mini-stack here over assuming every familiar Colorado name shares the same power-play minutes.

Goalies: price, confirmation and lineup fit

Oettinger $7,400, if confirmed: Our first salary-based option. He is $1,000 cheaper than Thompson and leaves more room for the skater combinations above. Boston still carries scoring risk; this is a roster-construction preference, not a guarantee of a win or a claim that Dallas is the safest matchup.

Sorokin $7,500, if confirmed: A natural partner for an Islanders mini-stack. The $100 difference from Oettinger is small enough that the confirmed starter and final team news should matter more than the price gap. Do not pair him with an Anaheim skater stack in the same tournament lineup.

Tarasov $7,200: Detroit’s coach said he would start in Seattle in the team’s October 19 report. He is our lower-priced tournament alternative. His value is the available salary and announced assignment, not an invented save projection. There is still downside if Detroit gives up early goals or Seattle does not generate enough saves.

Thompson $8,400, if confirmed: The pay-up route for Washington-heavy builds. We would use him when the extra $900–$1,200 does not force us to abandon a preferred skater role. Paying more does not remove goalie volatility.

Oettinger, Sorokin and Thompson were unconfirmed on the October 20 goalie board during this morning’s research. Do not enter an unconfirmed goalie and assume the order in a depth chart is a start announcement.

A legal tournament construction, not a locked lineup

This example combines McDavid with the Washington even-strength trio and Montreal power-play salary relief. It is an illustration of how the recommended pieces fit, not an optimized projection or a cash-game guarantee.

Total: $49,600. Salary remaining: $400. Oettinger is a $200 upgrade if confirmed, bringing the total to $49,800. Sorokin is a $300 upgrade if confirmed, bringing it to $49,900. These choices must be made before their earlier locks: 8 p.m. for Dallas and 7 p.m. for the Islanders. They are not rescue swaps after Detroit news at 9:40 p.m. Neither is automatic; the matchup and your skater exposure still matter.

What changes before lock

• Confirm the scoring-line assignments for Holmstrom, Kyrou, Bolduc, Gritsyuk and Nadeau. A demotion changes the value case.
• Check Edmonton’s final units if Ryan Nugent-Hopkins returns. His export flag is IR; we are not including him without new clearance.
• Keep Ivan Demidov, John Tavares, Seth Jarvis and the other export injury flags out of a presumed-active pool. A return requires current confirmation.
• Confirm your goalie before that game’s lock. Tarasov’s coach announcement is stronger evidence than the export’s unexplained “P” marker.
• Check the contest’s swap rules. If late swap is available, preserve enough salary and roster flexibility for later games rather than assuming every cheap replacement will fit.

The first five games lock at 7 p.m. ET, followed by two games at 8, Minnesota–Edmonton at 9, Detroit–Seattle at 9:40, Carolina–Vancouver at 10 and Tampa Bay–Vegas at 10:30. Our picks do not require playing every window. They require keeping the role and lineup assumptions intact as news arrives.

Bottom line: Start with McDavid or the Montreal pair, use Washington or the Islanders for affordable correlation, and make the final goalie choice after confirmation. Holmstrom, Bolduc, Gritsyuk and Nadeau are the salary-relief names that deserve a role check before they deserve a roster spot.

All quoted salaries and eligibility are specific to the supplied October 20 DraftKings main slate. The export’s average-points column is historical, not a projection. No ownership percentages or fantasy-point forecasts are being presented as a verified model.