Locky’s First Period NHL Model, 2/27: Return of the Over Teams

Good morning!

The model had some success vs. opening numbers yesterday, as five of those six edges won. Today there are fewer games, but still some numbers that stand out right away.

Although Chicago and Tampa Bay both play tonight, and will both take a lot of money on their respective overs, neither game has the highest first-period projection in my model. That honor belongs to Calgary-New Jersey, with just over 2.2 goals. Part of the reason for that is Chicago and Tampa's respective opponents.

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.

Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Rangers // Chicago Blackhawks at Anaheim Ducks 

7:35 p.m. ET // 10 p.m. ET 

The Lightning play the Rangers, who have been a particularly conservative first period team, allowing just 25.8% of their goals in the first. League average is about 29.2%. Chicago faces Anaheim, which is an "average" first period team in terms of the distribution of its goals, but Anaheim is also anemic at goal-scoring in general, so a lower projection results from that too. No matter what period Anaheim is playing in, goal scoring is going to be tough.

At open, there's actually a huge edge on Chicago's over. It will be interesting to see how much these two "overs" get bet, and if an under edge emerges as a result. We've seen heavy action on both teams' first-period overs throughout most of 2019, and it's only gotten worse as the news of their record against such bets as spread.

If you remember, a very nice under edge emerged on Chicago a couple games ago at about +260 and it ended up victorious. Sometimes you have to get contrarian.

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.