Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 65 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 10-game main slate on this cool and sunny Tuesday morning in San Diego, California. Congratulations to one of my great friends in the industry “BKnodaysoff” on the birth of his beautiful daughter this morning! This ones for you!
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
Tyler Seguin was called out by Dallas Stars management a few months ago for having a terrible attitude to go along with his uninspiring play. This seemingly lit a fire under his backside as Seguin and his entire team snapped out of a first half of the season slump. The Stars are no longer playing uninspiring hockey. The squad’s first line and top power play unit (Tyler Seguin – Alexander Radulov – Mattias Janmark – John Klingberg) are my top stack of the night at home against a Philadelphia Flyers team that has dropped four of its last five games. With Dallas still reaching for a playoff spot and the Flyers poor puck control numbers since the All-Star break, I want a heavy piece of the Stars.
From the first night of the 2018-2019 NHL season, the Toronto Maple Leafs have had one of the top offenses in the league (with all due respect to the Tampa Bay Lightning). Yes, the Leafs have had offensive dips from time-to-time, but its top six (sometime top nine) forwards have been relevant for DFS purposes each night they play. While I do want exposure to the John Tavares line, my top play given the prices is the home team’s second line (Auston Matthews – William Nylander – Kasperi Kapanen – Morgan Rielly) that has been consistent since the All-Star break. The Hurricanes have leaked high-danger scoring chances against the whole season, so take advantage of that.
On the other side of this game, the visiting Carolina Hurricanes get to shoot against Garret Sparks, who is certainly not Frederik Andersen. The Leafs are in the bottom half of the league in high-danger scoring chances allowed and they have surrendered the ninth-most shots against. With the road team still fighting for a playoff spot, you should have exposure to the Canes top line (Nino Niederreiter – Sebastian Aho – Justin Williams) that should come out shooting.
Briefly, the Edmonton Oilers have owned a terrible defense all season and they are playing on back-to-back nights. The Colorado Avalanche are still looking to secured a playoff spot, so I want to have a piece of the team’s first line (Nathan MacKinnon – J.T. Compher – Alexander Kerfoot – Tyson Barrie) this evening. I expect this top line to log heavy minutes on the ice and we know that playing time equates to more opportunities to rack up DFS points.
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 10-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: Canadiens 1 (Tomas Tatar – Brendan Gallagher – Phillip Danualt), Coyotes 1 (Vinnie Hinostroza – Brad Richardson – Michael Grabner), Penguins 3 (Patric Hornqvist – Nick Bjugstad – Dominik Simon).
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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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