Welcome to the daily fantasy hockey top stacks column for Thursday, Jan. 18. As we have been dealing with very small slates — and have another very small slate on Friday — I thought I’d jump in and go through a slate that offers some more choices. We have a nice 10-game slate to work with tonight with some interesting matchups across the board.
Tonight’s Slate:
Boston Bruins @ New York Islanders (Boston, -135, 6.5 over/under)
Washington Capitals @ New Jersey Devils (Washington, -120, 5.5 over/under)
Toronto Maple Leafs @ Philadelphia Flyers (Philadelphia, -115, 5.5 over/under)
Dallas Stars @ Columbus Blue Jackets (even, 5.5 over/under)
St. Louis Blues @ Ottawa Senators (St. Louis, -120, 5.5 over/under)
Vegas Golden Knights @ Tampa Bay Lightning (Tampa Bay, -165, 6 over/under)
Buffalo Sabres @ New York Rangers (New York, -200, 5.5 over/under)
Arizona Coyotes @ Nashville Predators (Nashville, -210, 5.5 over/under)
San Jose Sharks @ Colorado Avalanche (San Jose, -115, 5.5 over/under)
Pittsburgh Penguins @ L.A. Kings (L.A., -125, 5.5 over/under)
I’m fascinated by the prospects of grabbing both sides of the New York Islanders vs. Boston Bruins game. The Bruins are on the second night of a back-to-back so the Islanders will likely avoid Tuukka Rask tonight. And on the Boston side we have the highest scoring team in NHL in the month of January against an Islanders team that has allowed 29 goals over their past seven games played. At the time of this writing the line hasn’t been released — but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an over/under of six and I wouldn’t surprised to see this game go over that amount (10:41 a.m. update: the line has come in and this game actually has a 6.5 over/under and we’re seeing Boston with the highest implied goal total of the night). Grab both sides of this game for cash games and tournaments.
We noted this in yesterday’s “Morning Coffee” column, but I think it’s worth repeating here. Boston’s offense has been very consistent as we can see if look back to end of last month:
Dec. 30: five goals scored
Jan. 2: five goals scored
Jan 6. seven goals scored
Jan. 7. five goals scored
Jan. 13. four goals scored
Jan. 15. two goals scored
Jan. 17: four goals scored
On the Boston side our top stack is the PASTRNAK/BERGERON/MARCHAND line. They skate together on the power play and five on five. To expand further on what we noted yesterday: “Over their past 10 games at even strength this line has accounted for seven goals and 112 shot attempts for.” (note: this line scored two more goals last night against Montreal)
Let’s look deeper into some key data about this line and the top line of New York.
The PASTRNAK/BERGERON/MARCHAND line has a CF% of 60.51 percent, a SF/60 of 36.94, a GF/60 of 3.57 and GA/60 of just 0.42. Furthermore, this line has an offensive zone start percentage of 58.27 percent.
Even though we’re dealing with a much smaller sample size of what will likely be New York’s top line (just over 35 minutes of ice time together, let’s take a look at the TAVARES/BAILEY/LEE line. This line has a CF% of just 49.23 percent, an offensive zone faceoff percentage of 54.76 percent and a SA/60 of 33.91. This line also has a GF/60 of 3.68 and but a very high GA/60 of 3.34.
So while I of course want an Islanders stack with Tavares tonight, Boston’s first line is screaming out to be stacked against an Islanders team that has allowed a league third-worst 4.14 goals in January, a league-worst SCA/60 rate 39.76 over their past 10 games and a league-worst HDCA/60 rate of 16.88 over their past 10 games.
One thing I tend not to do, since it’s difficult to quantify, is look how emotion plays into these games. But Boston is on the second night of a back-to-back after playing the Montreal Canadiens last night — which is always a high-emotion game. It is possible we see a flat Bruins team to start this game, but a team that slowly recovers during the course of the game. It’s during this first period we could see the stack of TAVARES/BAILEY/LEE pay off for us.
Tonight I’m going to