Locky’s First Period NHL Model, 3/12: A Mismatch in Calgary

Good morning!

Yesterday the largest perceived edge on the board (Islanders over) came up short.

The other edges were small by comparison, and there were only a few. The Islanders were going to end up determining the night's results, and they did so negatively.

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 Jersey Devils at Calgary Flames, 9 p.m. ET

As for tonight, the largest edge vs. the openers comes from the game that also has (by far) the most lopsided implied win probability. Devils-Flames isn't supposed to be a close game, at least not a lot of the time.

Calgary is -400 right now in the full-game market. But the game has a pretty reasonable implied total (about 6.2) and the two teams involved have been very aggressive in the first period.

The Devils both score and allow a better-than-average percent of their goals in the opening 20 minutes, and the Flames allow 33.8% of their goals in the first.

For both of these teams, the first period is generally the most exciting. I also project Calgary to have to do most of the heavy-lifting in terms of the scoring.

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.