Locky’s First Period NHL Model, 2/21: Many Games = Many Bets?

Good morning!

A profitable night for the model last night, even if only small, as the largest edge vs. the openers (Islanders-Flames over) won, and the very small edges sort of evened each other out.

If you ended up with an edge on the Blackhawks under (which got to around +200 or +205 in some places before dipping back down), my apologies, as Jimmy Howard did you/us no favors.

Tonight there are a LOT of games (Thursday is always one of the busier nights of the week in the NHL) but what you'll see at least in terms of early projections is not very many edges.

This happens a lot, although it has yet to happen since we've been doing the series. It is not uncommon to have nights with nothing greater than 5%, and maybe 1-2 games over 2%. It's all good.

But what you will want to do on nights like tonight is monitor market movement, as edges may emerge later in the day.

So be sure to download the spreadsheet at the bottom of this article and cross-reference the projections with your sportsbook's odds closer to puck drop.

A Reminder

If you're new here, I build 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.

For more info on my model, check out the story below.

St. Louis Blues at Dallas Stars

8:35 p.m. ET

Dallas plays again, so naturally, the opener pointed to a bet on their under at a price of -140.

The edge isn't NEARLY as big as we have had the past 3-4 games, and the line will likely be on the move throughout the day.

As we talked about before, Dallas' opponent is a significant part of the equation. A couple nights ago, the Stars played Nashville, which was the second most conservative first-period team (after Dallas).

Naturally that matchup created a large under edge vs. "average" pricing in markets.

But tonight, Dallas plays St. Louis, a much more average first-period team. In fact, the Blues actually score a good amount of their goals in the first (nearly a third), so this isn't as much of a yawn-fest as Dallas-Nashville.

Hence a smaller edge in general.

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

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