Good morning everyone and welcome to volume 52 of the Top Shelf Knucklepuck Stacks! We have a cash-playable 9-game main slate on this cool and sunny Saturday 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
I wrote up the San Jose Sharks in this space on Thursday and the same analysis applies this evening as they are on home ice hosting a sinking Vancouver Canucks team. The Sharks are cooking along with seven consecutive wins and the team has been led by its impressive second line (Evander Kane – Tomas Hertl – Joonas Donskoi). The matchup is much easier tonight (compared to Thursday) opposite a Vancouver team that is allowing over three goals against on over 31 shots against per game. Do not forget to add on Brent Burns, who has looked like his 2017-2018 self without Erik Karlsson in the lineup.
Night in and night out, the Tampa Bay Lightning continue to prove that they have the best offense in the NHL. With another implied goal total of at least four goals tonight, you must have heavy exposure to the team’s top scoring line (Brayden Point – Nikita Kucherov – Yanni Gourde – Victor Hedman). The Montreal Canadiens are a tough team to figure out as they are not a bad defensive team, but the team does allow an average of 31.3 shots against this season and over 33 shots against over its last three. With the Lightning averaging nearly four goals per game, nearly 33 shots per game and a top six high-danger scoring chances percentage, stack them and enjoy watching the game.
As much love as I have for those top two stacks, my favorite stack on the night is the Winnipeg Jets top line and first power play unit (Blake Wheeler – Mark Scheifele – Kyle Connor – Jacob Trouba). If Dustin Byfuglien suits up, he should be stacked with the forwards, but if he sits, Trouba should be your selection at the point. We have been picking on the Ottawa Senators all season and for good reason – they are still near the bottom (if not the bottom) on all main defensive statistics. Meanwhile, the Jets own one of the top offenses in the league and they should dominate a Senators team that has allowed the sixth most high-danger scoring chances against.
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: Blue Jackets 1 (Pierre-Luc Dubois – Cam Atkinson – Artemi Panarin – Seth Jones), Predators 1 (Ryan Johansen – Viktor Arvidsson – Filip Forsberg – Roman Josi), Leafs 2 (John Tavares – Mitch Marner – Zach Hyman – Morgan Rielly).
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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!
