Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 11 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 10-game slate on this cool Thursday morning in San Diego. We are almost at a point where I’ll tell you to play your normal volume. Once again, it is still very early in the season and some teams are playing their second game today. 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
The Anaheim Ducks look anything but mighty these days as injuries have ravaged their team from top to bottom. This has led to them have the worst puck control numbers in the NHL. With a CF% of 40.49%, the rank at the bottom, worse than the Islander, Canucks and Senators by over a full percentage point. This leads to our love of the Dallas Stars on home ice tonight. The Stars may rank in the bottom 10 in puck control numbers, but they are still over 8% better than the Ducks. Load up on Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and uber-value Tyler Pitlick. Seguin was more quiet than I expected on Tuesday, but he is still shooting at an incredible rate (4.18 S/GP). Don’t overlook John Klingberg, who has been a fixture on the Stars top power play unit, as he is averaging a point per game.
The Boston Bruins top line has been the best line in hockey since the first night of the season. They are on home ice tonight against the Philadelphia Flyers, who are drawing the sixth most penalties per 60 minutes while the Bruins are in the top 10 in penalties drawn per 60 minutes. This is critical because these two teams are hated conference rivals and it should be a chippy game in the Garden. Boston is a top ten puck control team and the Flyers are allowing the fourth most goals against per 60 minutes. David Pastrnak should be a staple in your cash games. The full power play stack has four goal upside.
Other Notable Stacks
I am essentially going to copy and paste this entry from Tuesday into my piece again. Connor McDavid drives the Edmonton Oilers. Until the second goal of their last game, he figured in every single goal the team had scored until that point. Skating with former number one draft pick, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, and Kailer Yamamoto, the team is at home against the visiting Washington Capitals who have a bottom nine CorsiFor% (47.75%). As great as the team’s offense has looked, they are allowing the fifth most goals against per 60 (3.18 GA/60). McDavid is always cash game playable and the full line stack at home will be overlooked on a large slate.
Do not sleep on the Blues tonight. They are at home where they are a disappointing 1-3, but they host a Columbus Blue Jackets team that is allowing the most goals against per 60 minutes. As much as I like rostering their offense given their top 6 expected goals per 60, their goaltending has been awful. The Blues top line is underpriced around the league.
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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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