Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 15 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 11-game slate on this cold Saturday in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which is where I am for the weekend. Remind me to not come back here again as it is far too cold for my Southern California-acclimated 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
The top stacks according to my model are the Calgary Flames 1 / PP1 (with Matthew Tkachuk over Elias Lindholm), St. Louis Blues 1 (with Alex Pietrangelo), Vegas Golden Knights 1 / PP1, Edmonton Oilers 1, and New Jersey Devils 1. The Capitals top power play unit actual rates slightly higher than the Flames, but are nearly $3k more expensive than the Flames power play unit.
With respect to the Oilers, I think you need to have Connor McDavid in cash. A mini stack of McDavid and Drake Caggiula makes sense as that duo looked well skating together the last game out. You may actually be able to get this line at less than 10% because the Oilers are on the road in Detroit against a Wings squad that has miraculously won three straight.
The fact of the matter is that Detroit is a below average team with bottom-half of the league numbers in CorsiFor% and expected goals against. I’ll take the Oilers stack at 10% and watch the Wings collapse against the most given player in the league.
The New Jersey Devils have the fourth-most expected goals per 60 and head across the New York / New Jersey border into Brooklyn to face an Islanders team that has the third-worst puck control numbers. Look for Taylor Hall, Kyle Palmieri and Nico Hischier to bounce back after a slow game the other night.
Other Notable Stacks
The Los Angeles Kings have struggled through the first month of the season, yet the team has still collected three goals on the man advantage over the past two games. The Columbus Blue Jackets have surrendered power play goals in four of their last five games. The visiting team is also allowing the seventh-most goals against on over 32 shots against. The stack is the PP unit: Dustin Brown – Anze Kopitar – Ilya Kovalchuk – Jeff Carter – Drew Doughty.
You may be able to get the Philadelphia Flyers at about 3% owned on the road in the Shark Tank against a San Jose team that has dropped three of its last four. Meanwhile, the Flyers have ripped off two wins in a row against two other California teams. Your target here is the PP unit: Nolan Patrick – Sean Couturier – Travis Konecny – Shayne Gostisbehere – Claude Giroux. You should also be able to roster the Sharks top line or second unit at 5% as well. As usual, target the Logan Couture line (Tomas Hertl – Couture – Timo Meier).
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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