Despite the fact that the season is barely a week old, the NHL inexplicably scheduled zero games on Sunday. It was a frustrating decision for hockey fans to deal with so early in the campaign, but the silver lining is that we get a relatively busy Monday night.
Here are two bets that should provide value on Oct. 17:
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NHL picks and predictions for Monday, Oct. 17
Florida Panthers (-134) at Boston Bruins (+112), O/U: 6.5
There were plenty of legitimate questions about the Boston Bruins coming into the 2022-23 NHL Season. After getting bounced in Round 1 of the playoffs last spring, the Bruins announced that Brad Marchand, Charlie McAvoy and Matt Grzelcyk would miss the beginning of the new season, and that was before they fired head coach Bruce Cassidy. Also, teams behind them in the Atlantic Division, like Ottawa and Detroit, made big offseason splashes. For the first time in a while, there was some uncertainty in the air in Beantown.
Through two games, the uncertainty seems like it was a bit of an overreaction.
The Bruins are off to a 2-0-0 start with 11 goals scored and five conceded. One of those games came against the Arizona Coyotes, but the other was a road tilt in Washington against the Capitals. Both performances were impressive, with Boston finishing with a +4 goal differential and a +20 shot attempt differential at 5-on-5.
Boston will face another tough test on Monday night against the Panthers — and the Bruins will be without Jake DeBrusk and Brandon Carlo — but Florida’s defense projects to be a weakness relative to their expectations, and the goaltending battle is likely to be pretty close to a wash, no matter who gets the nod for each team.
The market seems to be a little too high on the Panthers after their 2-0-0 start and perhaps a little too low on Boston because of the injury issues. The B’s have value as a home underdog down to +105.
The Bet: Bruins +112 (Caesars)
Betting on the NHL?
Winnipeg Jets (+120) at Dallas Stars (-144), O/U: 6
The Dallas Stars are off and running under new head coach Peter DeBoer. The Stars swept a home-and-home with the Nashville Predators by an aggregate score of 9-2 and the market has reacted as you’d expect. Dallas now finds itself as a -144 favorite against the Winnipeg Jets on Monday night.
Like the Bruins, the Jets came into the new season with more questions than answers. Winnipeg was coming off a disappointing 2021-22 campaign and had to replace head coach Paul Maurice, who resigned last November. The Jets brought in Rick Bowness, who coached the Stars from 2019-22, as his replacement. The hiring raised a few eyebrows, but when you consider that Winnipeg had struggled to find any sort of defensive form over the last few seasons, bringing in a defense-first coach like Bowness made some sense (Bowness will miss Monday’s game with Covid, but that doesn’t impact the handicap for this contest at all).
With all the uncertainty in Winnipeg, the market for the Jets began to tank considerably. A year after being a chic long shot pick in the Western Conference, nobody was going near Winnipeg in the preseason market.
Just because the market is down on the Jets doesn’t mean that there isn’t potential for a strong team. Winnipeg’s top-six, which features Mark Scheifele, Kyle Connor, Nikolaj Ehlers, Pierre-Luc Dubois, Blake Wheeler, and Cole Perfetti, is prolific. The Jets also have one of the NHL’s best goaltenders in Connor Hellebuyck. If this team gets itself sorted defensively, it has a high ceiling.
It’s not worth looking too heavily into one game, but Winnipeg did look impressive in its season-opening win against the New York Rangers on Friday. The Jets caught the Rangers on the second leg of a back-to-back and got to avoid Igor Shesterkin, but Jaroslav Halak was quite solid for the Blueshirts, and Winnipeg limited the red-hot Ranger offense to just one goal.
Whether or not the Jets can carry that over into Game 2 and beyond remains to be seen, but the price is good enough to find out against a team that is catching a lot of love after two solid showings.
The Bet: Winnipeg Jets +125 (PointsBet)
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