UPDATED: The Shot on Goal – DraftKings & FanDuel Rocket League Preview – April 25, 2020 – fantasycruncher.com

Saturday kicks off the North American region of the Rocket League Spring Series with four invite teams and four teams from open qualifiers battling it out in a double-elimination bracket. Much like last week, we will likely not have betting odds for any of these matchups, though the quality of teams between the invited teams and the open qualifier teams is pretty wide.

With the disqualification of Jamal Jambury, this slate has been pulled and completely redone. If you registered lineups earlier, your entry fees have been reimbursed. The new matchups are as followed:

Rogue vs. G2

72PC vs. VAN

PK vs. SSG

CP vs. NRG

Core Plays

G2 ESports – JKnaps, Chicago, Rizzo (DK Only)

G2 ended the regular season in the RLCS with a 6-3 record which netted them the two seed and a bye into the semifinals in the playoffs. From here G2 beat NRG 3-2 and then Spacestation Gaming 4-0 in the Grand Finals. Spacestation Gaming is renowned as the top team in North America and one of the best in the world, so the 4-0 sweep was a bit of a shocker here. This team is lead by JKnaps and Chicago, as Chicago finished third in the Golden Striker award by averaging 0.83 goals per game. That may seem a bit on the lower end, but North America plays a bit more defensive and well-rounded than some other regions where we would see over 1.00 winning the Golden Striker. JKnaps finished atop the Clutch Playmaker leaderboard, averaging the league-high in assists at 0.74 a game.

JKnaps is the highest priced option on this squad and the highest overall on FanDuel. This makes sense to me as JKnaps has a career winning percentage of 66% and is averaging the highest goals per game and assists per game on this squad. However, I think Chicago is priced a bit too cheap on DraftKings where he is just $9,400. This is in contrast to FanDuel where Chicago is priced second most expensive behind JKnaps. Furthering this, DraftKings priced Rizzo down to $8,600 while he is the fourth most expensive option on FanDuel.

In contrast to the earlier pricing, Chicago and Rizzo actually got bumped down a bit more. That is, of course, due in part to Rogue being a bit tougher of a matchup. I think if anything this takes some ownership off of G2 and doesn’t necessarily change much. G2 beat Rogue handily in the regular season 3-0, outscoring them 8-2 in the set.

From a personal standpoint, you can three-man stack G2 on DraftKings pretty easily, though I think a two-man stack of JKnaps and Chicago is my preferred here. This is not a knock against Rizzo at all, but we don’t need to overpay for an anchor. On FanDuel, Rizzo should be completely removed from your player pool at $16,400.

NRG ESports – JSTN, GarrettG

Much like G2, NRG also went 6-3 in the RLCS regular season before being beaten by that very G2 team in the semi-finals. We see all three NRG players here priced at $9,600 or higher on DraftKings, with JSTN being the most expensive at $11,400 and this is for good reason. JSTN finished second in the Golden Striker award, averaging 0.85 goals per game. His teammate, GarrettG, finished third in assists at 0.67 a game. JSTN is a guy I actually watch nightly on Twitch and he really can score from anywhere on the field and has some of the best off the wall ball-handling in the league. Between games, JSTN is always in training mode practicing wall-dribbling and though other pro players do this as well, it is cool to see first hand.

JSTN is one of the first guys I am looking at plugging into lineups for Saturday due to his goal upside and the lopsided matchup here against Charolette Pheonix. JSTN holds a 0.90 goal per game average throughout his career and is averaging almost two saves per game. He isn’t going to get many assists in these matchups as that is typically reserved for his teammate GarrettG (who FanDuel decided to leave the second “t” off his name) as he averages around 0.70 assists per game and aforementioned 0.67 this past season. Turbopolsa rounds out this group, who much like Rizzo for G2, is more of an anchor/third-fiddle on this team. I spoke last week on how this doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t have big games, but they are just usually the third piece in rotation and not the primary shooter.

The stark change here is GarrettG is now cheaper than Turbopolsa, which was not the case on the early slate. GarrettG at just $8,400 feels like a pricing mistake and will absolutely be the highest owned play on the slate this weekend in my opinion.

JSTN and GarrettG are the stackable pieces here, though the pricing is going to make a three-stack very difficult. FanDuel priced GarrettG down a bit too far as he is the seventh most expensive on DraftKings but tenth on FanDuel. Due to this, I can see GarrettG being one of the highest owned players come Saturday as he won’t break the bank but is also on a team that will be a heavy favorite.

Other Notes

So when we break this all down we now have two large favorites likely in NRG, and Spacestation Gaming. G2 is still a decent sized favorite, but I wouldn’t call it “large”, more so they are just the better team in my eyes. Last week we did see a player from a team that lost 0-3 be in the optimal lineup, but that was in part to a large save performance. I still believe rostering a player in the hope of getting saves is not going to be optimal in the long run for us. This slate is trending towards being pretty chalky unless we get a very unexpected upset. Vanguard does have upside in Atomic but might work better as a one-off. I do not believe that the shake up of the schedule really changes any initial thoughts, though it may make NRG my 1A to G2’s 1B now, instead of vice-versa earlier. 

I didn’t touch on Spacestation Gaming a lot in this article, though all three players from them, Sypical, AxB, and Arsenal are in play. Spacestation is one of the best Rocket League teams on this planet and should have no issue taking down Pittsburgh. 

Cheat Sheet – DraftKings

Cheat Sheet – FanDuel (any player listed as STAR can also be considered for CPTN)