Back to the beginning!
Won’t be many two game slates on Tuesday and Thursdays this year but after the first day of the season there is another one today with a start time one hour later than usual at 8pm EST.
To recap my thoughts on two game slates from that first day:
I like to do the following 3-2-1 lineups (Forwards):
- One full line (three players)
- Two players from a line
- One off forward
A couple of tricks with this are:
- Your complete lineup will have players from no more than three teams.
- You might use defencemen you don’t like
More broadly you are filling in the D and Goalie positions based on the teams from the forward lines.
For D, stick with the top of the projections but don’t be scared of the punt D here. I would include the following. Any lower than these guys and you are running into guys who get 10 minutes a game – looking at you Timothy Liljegren.
I’d expect Spence to be pretty popular – avoiding him might be the smart play.
Goalies, just correlate with one of your forward groups and don’t think about it more than that.
Forwards
Just ignore the fourth line forwards.
It’s really easy to overthink small slates as it feels like everyone could be in play. Remember correlation is king, that’s why you force your lineups to only three teams. That way when an LAK2 goal is assisted by a punt defenceman like Vladislav Gavrikov you can reap the benefits.
Optimizer
Paydirt projections are now an auto-loaded projection source at The Solver! If you are in need of an optimizer solution hit up the affiliate link here : https://thesolver.com/?ref=paydirt
Playing with ‘The Solver’ and there are a lot of advanced settings you can mess with. However, for the basics on a 2 game slate I’d set these:
Unique Players = 3 – setting this to three helps to keep your full line stacks together
Max Players vs Goalie = 0 – you CAN have this set to more than 0, personal preference but I like none.
Flex Positions = EXCLUDE D – again personal preference but I found long term it’s better to have this as a forward only slot
I also like to remove the option of using two D from the same team. In very unique spots it can work but broadly this is a better option even on a two game slate.
Unfortunately, there isn’t currently the option to get ‘EXACTLY’ what I like for stacking with the 3-2-1 forward as described above but using 3-3-2 and removing line 4 and removing PP lines from the stack gets you essentially there. Include all positions with each stack.
As an example for tonight you will get lineups like this :
LAK2 – 3 man
VAN1 – 2 man – with Demko/Hronek
TOR – Marner one-off – with Rielly
Good luck out there and hit up discord with any questions!