Locky’s NHL First Period Model, 3/23: Finding Edges on a 14-Game Slate

Good morning!

As you have no doubt figured out, the first period projections are winding down a little bit because the regular season is doing the same. There isn't much time left, and there's a LOT going on in the world of sports, as you are aware. But sometimes, there's a slate of games where we wake up and take notice.

And today, there are 14 games! 14!

So we just had to bring the projections back.

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.

Tampa Bay Lightning at St. Louis Blues, 8 p.m. ET

One of the largest perceived edges vs. the openers is surprising, and one is not.

Tampa Bay, the "over" machine, has an edge at -160 against St. Louis. This is mostly due to the fact that not only is Tampa's distribution of goals still heavily skewed towards the first period, but St. Louis is a slightly above-average first-period team in the same way.

The combination of the two is creating the edge, even though the Blues don't allow many goals in general.

Anaheim Ducks at Los Angeles Kings, 10:30 p.m. ET

The other edge is a little more surprising, and has been a contrarian angle that has come up a few other times this season, an Anaheim over.

Not only that, an over where Anaheim is playing the Kings! Yikes. Hold your nose. Both teams are just slightly above average in first-period distributions, so that's a small advantage, and also I project about 5.35 goals in the game. That means a very heavily-shaded under 1.5 is pretty wrong, in my opinion.

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.