Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 16 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 9-game slate on this beautiful Tuesday in San Diego, California. I created all of the content for yesterday from the Centurion Lounge in the Philadelphia Airport with great success Let’s see if we can recreate that today. By the way, if you are reading this and you HAVE NOT VOTED YET, GO VOTE!! If you are happy or unhappy with the way our country is (I am speaking to our subscribers in the United States), YOU have a voice. Go vote NOW! Then come back and read the rest.
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
I love that the New Jersey Devils are playing some solid hockey and get to face an Ottawa Senators team that has the worst CorsiFor% in the league. The Senators are also allowing the most goals against per game as well as the most shots against per game. Even on the road, the Devils top line (Taylor Hall – Nico Hischier – Kyle Palmieri) is a fantastic stack. That said, the team’s second line has had great chemistry lately and will be a nice, low-owned stack that should have better matchups on the road (Marcus Johansson – Travis Zajac – Miles Wood).
Despite three wins in their last three tries, the Dallas Stars have struggled in killing off penalties. The team has allowed four power play goals against over its last three games and your target tonight is the Columbus Blue Jackets top line and top play unit (Artemi Panarin – Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson – Seth Jones). Moreover, Dallas has bottom five puck control numbers.
As good as Carolina looked early on, the team has now dropped four straight and head to St. Louis to face a Blues team that has won two of its last three and has scored 13 goals during that span. The team has also managed to tally power play goals in five straight games so look to the team’s top line and top power play unit to do some damage this evening (Jaden Schwartz – Ryan O’Reilly – Vladimir Taranseko – Alex Pietrangelo).
Other Notable Stacks
Once again, we find ourselves taking a look at the Los Angeles Kings, a team that has not looked great through the first month of the season. Nevertheless, you should target their offense tonight on home ice in the Staples Center against another California team that is allowing the second-most shots against per game. The stack is the PP unit: Dustin Brown – Anze Kopitar – Ilya Kovalchuk – Jeff Carter – Drew Doughty as it has been the line that has had the best chemistry as indicated by the fact that the team has scored goals on the man advantage in three straight contests.
* * *
There were some questions in the Slack chat over the first week weeks 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.
* * *
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!
