Top NHL Prop Bets for Monday: Jimmy Howard Over/Under 31.5 Total Saves?

There are only four games on Monday, but we still have plenty of opportunities to look for exploitable prop bets by leveraging our NHL Models and Trends tool as well as the Bet Labs database.

Here are two props I’m eyeing tonight in the Carolina Hurricanes-Detroit Red Wings game, starting at 7:30 p.m. ET.

Red Wings W Andreas Athanasiou

The pick: Under 3.0 shots (-130)

Athanasiou's shots have spiked from 2.48 per game over the past year to 3.25 over the past month, but this looks like a prime regression spot for the 24-year-old.

As we talked about extensively on Inside the Lab, Carolina has allowed the second-fewest shots per game (24.9) this season, and the Red Wings have the lowest Corsi for expectation on the slate. This prop looks to be weighing recent production more heavily than it is weighing the matchup, which could be a mistake tonight in a horrific volume-based situation.

Red Wings G Jimmy Howard

The pick: Over 31.5 saves (-115)

In the same game, this prop for Howard looks equally egregious. It’s pretty simple: Detroit is top-10 in shots against (33.5 per game) and Carolina has by far the most shots for (42.1) to start the season.

In models, our proprietary save-prediction metric has Howard projected for (by far) the most saves on Monday’s slate (37.94), which makes sense considering that the Hurricanes own the highest Corsi for expectation by an equally large margin.

Another data point in favor of the over is Carolina has surprisingly scored only 3.25 goals per game this season, which is squarely in the middle of the pack, even though it has unloaded a ton of shots every night.