Hey Bergy, welcome to the forums!
I have been playing DFS on Draft Kings for about a year now, I started at the beginning of last season.
I think you are doing the right thing as far as picking players, you wan't players who score, shoot and for defense, block.
Your goalies need to have a great game, high shots, low GA always - shutouts won't hurt either!
Something I have noticed over the past year that I think is critical with DFS is the FIELD OF PLAY.
I have actually posted in a couple of threads about this and used my own entries as data.
Let me actually give you some stats from last night on draft kings!
This is one of the lineups I entered.
Seguin - 6.0
Sissons - 3.0
Pominville - 3.5
Vanek - 4.5
Vatrano - 3.0
Chara - 5.0
Spurgeon - 3.5
Dubnyk - 8.4
Ovechkin - 1.5
Not the greatest lineup AT ALL and definitely not a winner in any big contests. However, good ENOUGH to make money and win certain ones.
Contest 1: 920 Entries, 185 Paid (Need to beat 735 people)
Place: 104, Won $15
Contest 2: 19,159 Entries, 3840 Paid (Need to beat 16,000+ people)
Place: 2185, Won $6
Contest 3: 9,400 entries, 1956 paid (Need to beat 6,500+ people)
Place: 1,060, Won $0.25
I also won 4 double-up contests with this lineup.
Had I have skipped on contest 2 and 3 entered the same lineup in contest 1 for example, I would have won $15 again (twice), instead of $6 and $0.25
My point with this data is that in order to win in a field of 1,000's of people, you need to do one of a couple of things:
a) draft a PERFECT lineup on purpose
b) draft a PERFECT lineup by accident
c) draft 20 different lineups, and one of them still has to be PERFECT
Or, you can draft a decent lineup when you are up against less people, and usually win!
I personally always enter the big contests, on the chance I did indeed draft the perfect lineup.
I really like double-ups and multipliers, I find it easy to beat 50% of the players or 66% of the players for example.
All of the big contests always pay 20% of the entrants, meaning you have to beat 80% of ALOT of lineups.
The other thing I do is always enter Multiple Lineups.
Tonight for example, I have 4 lineups, each with emphasis on a specific team more than others. My 4 lineups tonight are in 31 contests total.
I usually enter the 4 lineups in the same contests, unless it is a double-up or a multiplier.
If I feel good about a line-up I will enter it 2-3 times in the same contests hoping to place with the same team multiple times.
Usually the big winners spread their teams out very well, however, they draft 10-30 different teams to cover their basis.
Hope this helps!