Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 14 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 12-game slate on this cool and crisp Thursday in San Diego. I hope you had a wonderful time trick-or-treating with your children last night. I also hope they kept you up with the sugar running through their blood!
If you skipped my article from Friday, October 5, 2018 or simply glazed over my sage advice on how to balance your DFS budget early in the NHL, please go back and read or revisit the piece. Let’s continue our Tuesday streak!
Top Stacks
We nailed targeting Sidney Crosby and Dominik Simon in cash against the Islanders on Tuesday night. However, we were screwed by the absolutely atrocious goaltending from Matt Murray. He could not make a save at all and that sank our cash LU. Hindsight is 20/20 and I could have gone Antti Raanta in cash. We live another day this evening and my advice from Tuesday remains as the Penguins take on the Islander again. You are loading up on the Penguins top PP unit or top line (Jake Guentzel – Sidney Crosby – Dominik Simon) as Crosby should feast again on the Islanders, a team he has torched throughout his historic career. Moreover, the Islanders own the second-worst puck control numbers. As a side note, we did hit on Brooklyn’s second line two nights ago. Tonight, take a look at the Islanders top line (Anders Lee – Brock Nelson – Josh Bailey) as a low-owned GPP play.
The New Jersey Devils top line (Taylor Hall – Nico Hischier – Kyle Palmieri with Will Butcher) is also in play for the second game in a row. They are on the road in Detroit and the visiting team has one of the highest implied goal totals of the night. The Wings somehow managed to dominate the Columbus Blue Jackets on Tuesday while the Devils were throttle by the Tampa Bay Lightning. The top line connected for just one goal, but they should have a more well-rounded game this evening against a Red Wings team that is allowing the fifth-most goals against on the sixth-most shots against per game. With the fourth-most expected goals per 60, look for the Devils to hang at least four this evening.
With Auston Matthews out of the lineup, it looks as if John Tavares will be skating with Mitch Marner and Zach Hyman. The team is at home where they will face a Dallas Stars team that has bottom ten CF% numbers. The Stars have lost four straight to the Leafs and have dropped six straight against the team in Toronto. The two teams tend to play a high-event style of hockey when they meet (e.g., there were 11 goals scored in the teams’ first meeting this season) so even without Matthews, make sure you have exposure to Toronto.
Other Notable Stacks
The St. Louis Blues will go overlooked tonight, but don’t make that mistake yourself. The team’s top line (Jaden Schwartz – Brayden Schenn – Vladimir Tarasenko – Alex Pietrangelo) ranks high in my model on home ice at the Enterprise Center.
The Colorado Avalanches’ top line (Gabriel Landeskog – Nathan MacKinnon – Mikko Rantanen) is expensive, but you will get them at 5% owned or less on the road in the Saddledome.
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There were some questions in the Slack chat over the past few days about how to find the lines that I list as my top stacks on the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Cheat Sheet. Head over to either DailyFaceoff.com or LeftWingLock.com to see which skaters are on each of a team’s lines and then build your line stacks. For example, if you see that my top stack of the day is “PIT PP1 / 1”, look at one of the two sites listed above and you will see that the top power play unit of the Pittsburgh Penguins consists of Patric Hornqvist – Evgeni Malkin – Sidney Crosby – Kris Letang – Phil Kessel. The team’s top line features Jake Guentzel – Sidney Crosby – Patric Hornqvist. I decided to leave off the players’ names from the line stacks because of the fact that they may change before the game or after the team’s morning skate (if applicable). Both sites I mentioned are updated regularly and typically accurate. If you’re ever lost, just ask questions in our Slack chat.
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