Locky’s First Period NHL Model, 2/23: Edges All Over the Board

Good morning!

Last night was lackluster and disappointing on some level, as the largest edge vs. the openers was the Calgary-Anaheim over, which lost.

However, for those who stayed diligent, you hopefully gathered some kind of position on Chicago's under at a great price, which really should have mitigated a lot of your losses.

If you don't have the kind of time, that's OK, but it shows the benefit of running the numbers at your site a few times at different intervals during the day. Markets change.

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.

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

Saturday's Market

Today has been wild already, to be perfectly honest.

Some places opened games that others had not, and there was a lot of odd pricing going around because there wasn't a consensus opinion in the market yet.

As a result, the board had some fireworks within 5-10 minutes of open. The good news is, large edges remain — and I see seven edges in total — according to my numbers.

The best place to start is with with two popular matchups for first-period bettors: San Jose-Columbus, and Dallas vs. anyone.

Dallas' edge vs. the opener is a little larger than we've seen the past couple games (since Nashville) and again, that's because the Stars are playing Carolina.

The Hurricanes score and allow a lower-than-average percentage of their goals in the first, so the distribution in this game is out of whack compared to an "average" NHL game. That creates a lot of the edge — or at least, what boosts it from like 2-3-4 percent up to near 10.

As for San Jose-Columbus, the number has flown up and down since open, and I am big on the over here at the current prices. These are two of the most aggressive first period teams in terms of percentage scored and allowed, so we could very well see ripe early goal-scoring conditions that aren't totally priced into the market.

A busy Saturday! Stay diligent with your pricing throughout the afternoon.

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.