Locky’s NHL First Period Model, 4/1: We’re Back!

Good morning!

After a brief hiatus for the NCAA Tournament, the first-period NHL model has returned for today. There are enough games on the slate that we think a lot of you are secretly longing for some hockey prop betting. And we are here to help.

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.

Monday’s Eight-Game Slate 

We have three edges vs. the openers that are close to 5%. The two largest are Vegas-Edmonton and LA-Calgary.

Vegas and Edmonton have both developed into very high-scoring first period teams. Each one scores and allows a larger-than-average percentage of their goals in the first, and they’re playing in a game with an implied total of more than 6. That’s a good recipe for first-period scoring.

Meanwhile, Calgary allows almost the highest percentage of their goals in the first in the entire league, trailing only Chicago and Tampa Bay. And the Kings may be anemic offensively overall, but their distribution of goals is skewed slightly toward the first, as well.

That combination of two teams is almost always going to produce value vs. the market price using this hypothesis.

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.