Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 54 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 11-game main slate on this cool and sunny Tuesday morning in San Diego.
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
The Tampa Bay Lightning are in another smash spot tonight, but this suggested top stack is predicated on the assumption that Brayden Point will play. I tried getting Nikita Kucherov out of the optimal lineups on Tuesday night after the news about Point not playing broke late, but didn’t have time. Kucherov had a dismal game so it was clear that Point’s absence hurt him. The Lightning’s top line (Point – Kucherov – Yanni Gourde) is in play again if Point goes as the visiting Buffalo Sabres are allowing over three goals against per game on the ninth-most shots against. Tampa Bay has the highest-implied goal total on the evening so if Point plays, you stack the home team.
The Washington Capitals top line (Alexander Ovechkin – Evgeny Kuznetsov – Tom Wilson) is also in a prime spot in what should be a high-event hockey contest in Toronto. Without Nazem Kadri, the Leafs don’t have a forward that can shut down opposing forwards. That opens the door for the Capitals who get to shoot against a team that has allowed the seventh-most shots against per contest. Toronto has dropped two in a row and three of its last five and they own just league average high danger scoring chances against numbers, so don’t be surprised if the Caps erupt for four goals on the road.
As a corollary to the above suggested stack, the Maple Leafs actually have the second highest implied goal total on the evening and I want exposure to the home team in this contest. For me, the John Tavares line (with Zach Hyman and Mitch Marner) gets the nod at home ice as it should be the line that has the easiest matchup opposite the weakest Capitals line. Washington has allowed the tenth-most shots per game and, most disturbing for them, the second-most high danger scoring chances (with only the Blackhawks allowing more). As solid as the visiting team’s offense it, its goaltending has been shaky (as indicated by the fact that they have allowed the tenth-most goals against), so this further solidifies the Leafs offense as a top stack.
Don’t overlook San Jose’s top line (Logan Couture – Joe Pavelski – Timo Meier) on the road in Pittsburgh tonight. The Evander Kane line has gotten most of the ownership over the past few weeks (deservedly so), but it’s been the Couture-led top line that has notched the most goals, especially on the road. Pittsburgh’s defense and goaltending have been leaky (33.6 SA/GP), so grab the visiting Sharks at a low-ownership percentage tonight.
Other Notable Stacks
The stacks I wrote about above are the ones that I project to be highly-owned. When I write “highly-owned”, on a 11-game slate that typically means ownership of about 25% in GPPs. The stacks above also tend to be expensive. So, you will need to use some of the below mentioned stacks as fillers or as one-off individual plays to complement your high-priced stacks.
Other stacks that you should have exposure to tonight are: Panthers 2 (Vincent Trocheck – Evgenii Dadonov – Mike Hoffman – Keith Yandle), Blues 1 (Ryan O’Reilly – Vladimir Tarasenko – Brayden Schenn), Penguins 1 (Sidney Crosby – Jake Guentzel – Bryan Rust), Penguins 2 (Zach Aston-Reese – Evgeni Malkin – Phil Kessel), Predators 1 (Ryan Johansen – Viktor Arvidsson – Filip Forsberg – Roman Josi), Wild 2 (Zach Parise – Mikael Granlund – Luke Kunin).
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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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