Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 30 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 8-game slate on this beautiful sunny and warm Saturday morning here in San Diego, California. The rain has past us and things are back to normal. As I type this from my front porch, it is 68 degrees on this December 8, 2018
If you are a new subscriber to our NHL Core Plays, please make sure that you are playing all of the lineups that I post on any given day. NHL is such a highly-variant sport and there is truly no telling which lineup will go off. I do have my favorites each day, but even the lineups that I may not think have massive upside sometimes, in fact, have the upside you need to take down a tournament.
Top Stacks
We have our first over/under of 7 tonight and the Pittsburgh Penguins have an implied goal total of 4.1 as of the publication of this piece.
Thus, the easy top stack on this glorious Saturday is the Pittsburgh Penguins top line (Jake Guentzel – Sidney Crosby – Phil Kessel), which has looked fantastic since forming. The line owns nearly a 60% CorsiFor% and will get to shoot against an Ottawa Senators team that has the worst defensive numbers in the league. The Penguins second line is equally in play although the team (yes, again) shuffled up its lines and Evgeni Malkin centers Tanner Pearson and Bryan Rust. Kris Letang is the top blueliner in play this evening.
In a game that is currently carrying an over/under of 6, I will next look to stack the Florida Panthers top line (Jonathan Huberdeau – Aleksander Barkov – Mike Hoffman) at home against a visiting New York Rangers team that has dropped three straight and is allowing the fourth-most shots against per game. Additionally, the Panthers power play has been absolutely lethal with goals on the man advantage in seven straight games. For the power play stack, add on Evgenii Dadonov (one of my favorite players in the league right now) and Keith Yandle.
The third top stack on the night is the Detroit Red Wings first line (Justin Abdelkader – Dylan Larkin – Gustav Nyquist) that is at home and will face a Brooklyn Islanders squad that has the fifth-worst CF% through 27 games. The Islanders have lost four of their last five contests and the home team’s top line should have the best line matchup. Don’t overlook stacking the opposite side of this game with the Islanders second line as a low-owned play (Anthony Beauvillier – Mathew Barzal – Tom Kuhnhackl).
Other Notable Stacks
With as well as Adin Hill has been playing in net, I am less likely to play a full stack of the San Jose Sharks (although Evander Kane is always in play as a one-off) and I will instead take a look at the Arizona Coyotes first line (Alex Galchenuk – Nick Schmaltz – Clayton Keller).
Other lines that I will have exposure to are the second line from Tampa Bay (Tyler Johnson – Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov), the first line from Calgary (Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan Elias Lindhom), and the Columbus Blue Jackets top line (Artemi Panarin – Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson).
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There were some questions in the Slack chat over the first month of the season 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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