Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 53 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 9-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
Every time they hit the ice, you must have exposure to the Tampa Bay Lightning. It does not matter if they are at home or on the road or facing a great defensive team with a great goaltender (although no goaltender has been great this year), you must stack the Lightning. With an implied total of 3.5 in a game that is carrying an over/under of 6.5, Tampa Bay is on the road in Philadelphia and while the Flyers have won their last three, the team still allowed at least 38 shots against in those contests. Fire up Tampa 2 (Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov – Yanni Gourde) and enjoy the goal scoring. Carter Hart has looked solid this season for the orange shirts, but the NHL’s top offense should total at least four goals.
As for the other team from Florida, both of the Panthers top two lines are in play on home ice against a visiting Buffalo Sabres team that has dropped two in a row, three of their last four, and four of their last five. The Sabres have allowed over three goals against per game on 32.3 shots against while the Panthers have averaged over three goals per game on the fourth-most shots per contest. This matchup should be a high-event hockey game that features around 70 shots so make sure you have exposure to Florida 2 (Mike Hoffman – Vincent Trocheck – Evgenii Dadonov) and Florida 1 (Jonathan Huberdeau – Aleksander Barkov – Frank Vatrano).
You cannot ignore what Vladimir Taraenko has been doing over the past few weeks. Currently riding a career high point streak, the winger has recorded 20 points over his last 10 games. Along with Ryan O’Reilly and Brayden Schenn, Taransenko should have no trouble extending his 12 game point streak on home ice against a Toronto Maple LEafs team that has surrendered an average of 31.8 shots per contest. Yes, the Leafs have a great offense, but the team plays at a high pace and is vulnerable to offenses that move the puck up ice quickly, especially considering that the Leafs have averaged the fifteenth-most high danger scoring chances this season.
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 9-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: Penguins 1 (Sidney Crosby – Jake Guentzel – Bryan Rust), Penguins 2 (Zach Aston-Reese – Evgeni Malkin – Phil Kessel), Blue Jackets 1 (Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson – Artemi Panarin – Seth Jones), 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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Feel free to comment here or post a screenshot or photo on Instagram and remember to tag me @NotTonyM. I am always open to feedback and critique. Just remember, I respond to respect and love in whatever the message is that you want to share. Good luck!
