Locky’s First Period NHL Model, 3/26: Overs for Everyone!

Good morning!

Yesterday, the projections performed … in a word … "meh."

They went 2-2 vs. the openers, with the largest edge (Florida-Toronto under) losing hilariously fast. I referred to it yesterday as "holding your nose" taking that period under because it had the highest projected total of the entire day. And boy were there goals.

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 Islanders at Columbus Blue Jackets

7 p.m. ET

Today, we have fewer games but several "over" edges.

The largest edge, not surprisingly, is in an Islanders game. The Islanders continue to be a team that plays a lot of games the market projects as low-scoring, but the team tends to do most of its damage in the first period.

This is a good combination for a model testing our hypothesis. The Islanders both score and allow a higher-than-average percentage of their goals in the first. Their opponent, Columbus, is a regular in the "over" department, as well, and has even larger-than-average splits in terms of their goal distribution by period.

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.