Locky’s NHL First Period Model, 3/5: We Meet Again, Dallas

Good morning!

After a taking off last night's two-game slate, with the entire Lockerson family battling illness, we return refreshed and rejuvenated for a massive Tuesday.

Many of your old favorites are in action, including over machine Tampa Bay and kind-of-over-machine Columbus.

A Reminder

If you’re new here, I built a model to handicap first-period over/unders in the NHL.

To provide the greatest value to you the bettor, each of these articles will include a downloadable Excel file at the bottom. In it, you can insert the line at your sportsbook of choice and see the bets that are — and aren’t — offering value, according to my model.

New York Rangers at Dallas Stars

8:30 p.m. ET

Once again, the largest edge against an opener belongs to the Dallas Stars. I know, I know, it seems like that's the case every game (even though it's not). But again, they are playing an opponent (the Rangers) that has a consistently light goal distribution in the first period. They are below the NHL average in terms of the amount of their goals they score and allow in the first.

So when a team like that plays Dallas, who never does ANYTHING in the first, you're going to get an edge, with the way this structure works. It's just the way it is. So yes, Dallas under (as of now). Again.

The more surprising edge that emerged was the Detroit-Colorado under — two teams that are incredibly conservative in the first period with their profiles, but which we don't talk about a lot. Detroit's also very low-scoring in general, not just in the first period, which drags down the projection pretty significantly.

There are plenty of edges now, and I'm sure there will be plenty of new edges later. Let's get to it.

Locky’s First-Period NHL Over/Unders: Full Slate Projections

Download the Excel doc to input odds from your sportsbooks. The table below is best viewed on a desktop computer.