The Shot on Goal – DraftKings Rocket League Preview – April 4, 2020 – fantasycruncher.com

We’ve reached the final week for RLCS Oceania as all eight teams are battling for seeding for their upcoming double-elimination bracket to reach the World Championships.

The Oceania region only gets two teams into the World Championships, so instead of the top two teams being automatically qualified like in North America and Europe, all teams must battle it out in a post regular season bracket. This makes being a top-four seed more important and makes some matchups today carry a bit more weight.

In this article, I will focus on my core plays with a cheat sheet at the end.

Core Plays

Renegades – CJCJ & Siki

Renegades enter today as the biggest favorite on the board, which shouldn’t be surprising as they are facing 1-5 Overt. Overt is on a rough stretch right now, losing their last four matches and winning just three total games across those four games. Overt is also giving up nearly three goals per game which is easily the most in the league. To match that they are giving up nearly ten shots per game as well.

This doesn’t bode well when you take into account that CJCJ and Siki are one and two in the league at shots on goal. So what happens when the team that shoots the most meets the team that gives up the most shots? Hopefully goals aplenty.

I think DraftKings really underpriced these two as there are ten players higher-priced before you reach CJCJ at $10,000 and Siki at $9,000. Because of this, I think it is easy to call these two very early chalk so as great as a spot they may be in, with a new sport like this, we may be combating 60%+ ownership.  The third player on Renegades is Kamii and though any player has the ability to pop off on any given match, Kami plays more of a facilitator and defensive role that limits the upside here. Throughout his career, Kamii is only averaging a bit over .5 goals per game, which is where we are going to get a majority of our points from. With the pricing being a bit soft still, we shouldn’t need to dig into the third role here and I do no believe a three-player stack from this game is worth it, despite Renegades being a big favorite.

As for captain position, I think both CJCJ and Siki can be used, though, with these small four-man rosters, diversification is the key in the end.

Cringe Society – Torsos & Drippay

I mentioned above that Overt has been one of the worst teams in this region, but not as bad as Cringe Society’s opponent in Canberra Havoc. There might be an argument to which team is worse, as Canberra Havoc did defeat Overt when they met back on March 15th. Outside of that match, Canberra Havoc is 0-5 with just three-game wins inside those five matches.

Cringe Society has been pretty inconsistent this year, though two of their losses are to Mindfreak and Ground Zero, who are 1-2 atop of this region. The big hmm on this schedule is Cringe Society’s 3-0 loss to Overt back on March 8th. In the end, Canberra Havoc is allowing the most shots on goal in this region and the second-most goals.

They also are the worst scoring team which gives Cringe Society a defensive boost. For this, I am looking at Torsos and Drippay. Both of these players are coming off of a down week as they lost 3-1 to Mindfreak. A casual player who may not dig deep enough and is just looking at the one box score that DraftKings offers may see the low 100 point totals and place a fade on these guys.

Torsos has a notable career as a goal scorer as he has averaged around 0.90 goals per game throughout it, with Drippay not far behind notching a 0.82. Drippay has a slight edge in the assist department here, though that is sometimes a harder stat to nail down. The third member of Cringe Society is SPYDOGE who is just $6,600 on DraftKings. Due to the price, I expect him to get some one-off ownership, though he plays more of a defensive role that will limit his upside here. The price is low enough to take a GPP risk as Cringe Society could easily pull a 3-0 sweep here with high goal numbers. Cringe Society players are priced a bit better than Renegades, though there are still four higher than Torsos.

Much like Renegades, it is easy to work in these players at both captain and flex, so I would expect this to be the second-highest owned stack of the week. You can easily make a Renegades/Cringe Society stack and interchange captains to create an optimal that also diversifies a little bit.

Other Notes

MindFreak and Ground Zero Gaming face off today as the number one and number two teams in this region. In fact, Ground Zero players are three of the top four priced on this slate. While there is a world where a Ground Zero stack pops off, I do not think that is a given here and I do not consider them core plays today especially at their price. Pricing is pretty soft but just one top-priced option at captain will leave you at least with a decision to make.

Mindfreak also enters this match with the best defense in the region, allowing just 1.5 goals per game and less than seven shots. Mindfreak players are priced appropriately here, with all three being under $10,000 but above $8,800. I think a one-off here is possible as Ground Zero’s defense is middle of the pack and Ghost being the cheapest here, despite having the highest goal per game percentage in his career.

Team Esper and Fury Gaming round out this slate in a pivotal matchup for seeding sake as they could finish between third and sixth in the bracket and the top four seeds get the double-elimination side. All-in-all this should be a pretty high scoring matchup as both of these teams allow over nine shots on goal per game. The best overall play from this set in Amphis, who like the ones mentioned above, should also be pretty chalky as he is one of the more dominant players in this entire region. Amphis is involved in around 75% of all goals scored and is second in the region in score per game.

You will be paying a pretty penny here though, as Amphis is $11,800 – though, with the soft pricing on the two biggest favorites on the slate, fitting him in shouldn’t be that hard. With what should be a fast pace game, Team Esper actually presents a solid three-man stack in Ssteve, Delusion, and Frenzyy. As some teams in this region feature two guys who carry the load and one who anchors a bit, these three all remain pretty heavily involved with career numbers to back that up. I actually believe that Frenzyy has a slight edge over the other two from a DFS standpoint this week.

Cheat Sheet