If you've played season-long fantasy sports, you already know the basics. You draft a team of players and compete against others based on those players' real-life stats. Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) is the same core idea, but shrunk down to a single day or a week's worth of games. Instead of being stuck with the same team for a whole season, you get to draft a new one every time you play.

In a typical NHL DFS contest on a platform like FanDuel, you're given a fictional salary cap, say $55,000. Your goal is to fill out a full roster without exceeding that cap. Every player in the league is assigned a salary based on their recent performance and matchup. Superstars like Connor McDavid will cost a lot, while a fourth-line grinder will be much cheaper.

Your job is to find the right mix of high-priced stars and undervalued players to build the best possible team. A standard FanDuel NHL roster looks like this:

The Utility spot is flexible; you can put any forward or defenseman there, giving you an extra chance to target a player you like.

Once the puck drops, your players start earning points for their actions on the ice. Every shot, goal, and assist contributes to your team's total score. Even defensive plays like blocked shots earn points.

Goalies have their own unique scoring rules. They earn points for a win and for every save they make, but they lose points for goals they allow. A goalie who gets a shutout (allowing zero goals) receives a significant bonus.

You can enter your lineup into different kinds of contests, which generally fall into two categories.

The second category is cash games. These include contests like "50/50s," where the top half of the field wins, and "Head-to-Heads," where you compete against a single opponent. The payouts are smaller, but your odds of winning are much better.

That's the foundation of NHL DFS. You build a team within a salary cap, watch them rack up points, and compete in different types of contests for prizes. Now you're ready to start thinking about strategy.