Sunday’s Main Slate gets going at 3pm this afternoon, with five games in total on the main slate, which spans to start times at 7pm – so keep an eye on expected goalies as the day progresses! We have a few big favourites on the board today – so I am expecting a few teams to be VERY popular today (and quite frankly, going away from them is quite risky)….rather than focusing on the obvious ones, I will touch on a few less obvious stacks that I think are going to be in good spots before covering my favourite out of the chalk stacks as well. Let’s have a look at some ways to approach MME GPP builds for tonight’s slate!
- The Islanders have the potential to get lost in the weeds tonight with the four other big favourites on the slate. The match-up for them is outstanding as they go up against the Flyers, who have been letting up goals in droves, and there is no shortage of quality options to go stacking with for the Isles, spreading out over their top 9. They look to have juggled up their lines a little bit, moving Zajac between Barzal and Eberle on the top line while Nelson skates between Palmeiri and Dal Colle, while Pageau is skating with Beauvillier and Wahlstrom. My favourite way to approach them for this one would be two man stack combos of each of the top 3 lines, and you can probably get equal over overweight exposure to these stacks with high single digit weights in your crunches. We’ve seen the Flyers opponents break a few slates this season – and while that remains a long-shot, I do think there is an interesting game theory angle here. In terms of individuals, Beauvillier-Pageau in particular as a two man stack really intrigues me a lot.
- The sample size is tiny, but Alex Tuch and Tomas Nosek have some great advanced stats (granted when playing with Roy rather than Janmark)…but individually they have compelling advanced stats as well with Tuch sitting 2nd on the Golden Knights in expected goals (13.7) with Nosek checking in at 6.8 and Janmark with 8. They’ll get buried based on the fact they are a third line, but I do think that the spot for them is a great one tonight against the Ducks and they are definitely worth including in your builds as a value stack to pair with one of the higher priced stacks tonight. Alec Martinez is a great option to bolt onto them on the back-end – he’s expensive and doesn’t see PP time, but is still a great option to tack onto a VGK3 stack here.
- Even though I think that TOR1 will be popular tonight, given the rust that Vancouver likely has to shake off tonight, if you were looking at getting some exposure to Toronto tonight and wanted to go with the lower owned stack in their top six, I don’t hate the idea of going over-weight exposure on the Tavares line tonight. I’m not 100% sure who he will be skating with – but if I had to guess, it would be Hyman and Mikheylev.
Who do I think are going to be the chalk stacks today?
- TOR1/TOR PP1
- PIT1
- VGK2
- NYR1/NYR PP1
Out of the above, it’s hard to argue with the spot tonight for the top line for the Leafs who check in as -250 favourites with a projected total of six. It is looking like C Auston Matthews will be back in the line-up tonight after sitting out last game (he skated at practice on Saturday). Matthews and Marner (along with whoever is with them) have the highest expected goal total per 60 in the league this season and taking on a Canucks team that hasn’t played for a couple of weeks due to Covid – I am expecting them to be pretty rusty tonight. I’m expecting Galchenyuk to be playing along with Marner and Matthews tonight, and assuming they take the pre-game line rushes together, the spot is outstanding for them tonight and they are my favourite option from a stacking standpoint (and Matthews/Galchenyuk are my favourites at their price points for single entry to get two pieces here).
This article focuses mainly on stacking – if you want to see my favourite one-off plays, please look out for the NHL Daily Cheat Sheet that will be out a little later on this morning!
