The following Spotlight Stacks were selected by Awesemo.com writer Jake Hari. For more analysis on the slate, check out the Projections page as well as Awesemo’s NHL Player Rankings and Stacks.
ARI1 (*Perlini/Hinostroza*-Stepan-Panik)
The Stepan-Panik combo for the Coyotes has some data we can look at (310 minutes in 2017-18, 54.3 Corsi For Percentage, 28.8 Scoring Chances For per 60, 12.4 High-Danger Chances For per 60), and the Ducks are a team we can certainly attack. They’ll be missing at least 4 of their top-9 forwards, and possibly their top-line center, Ryan Getzlaf, for tonight’s game. Through their first 3 games the Ducks have the league’s worst Corsi For Percentage (38.4%) and are top-5 in Scoring Chances and High-Danger Chances allowed per 60 in the NHL. Panik, Stepan and Hinostroza will also get top power-play duties to add to the appeal of this cheap stack that should get great even-strength matchups.
*According to this article, Hinostroza is projected to be on Line 1, but other sites have Perlini. Make sure to check Twitter on this one at 9:30 ET when we get pregame skate lines*
VGK1 (Smith-Karlsson-Marchessault)
The Golden Knights will likely come at half the ownership of their opponent’s top line, but they’ve got a solid matchup against a team that has had great results in their first couple games, but their advanced numbers are lacking. Washington was fantastic on their banner night, but they allowed a whopping 22 High-Danger Chances at 5v5 against the Penguins the next night and the Backstrom line (who will likely hard-match VGK1) was crushed by both the Crosby and Malkin lines in that game. This top Vegas line was one of the best units in the NHL last season, so on a short slate where we could see them relatively low-owned, I’ll be overweight on them in GPPs.
