Game 7, baby! You better believe there’s 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 for the Capitals-Lightning game, which starts at 8:00 p.m. ET. All lines are from Bovada.
Capitals W Alex Ovechkin under 4.5 shots on goal (-110)
8:00 p.m. ET
If the Capitals lose this game, Ovechkin could find himself in Dan Marino territory as one of the best players of his generation never to win a championship. The Capitals have been the better team this series, but Ovechkin has been missing the net.
Fenwick is a metric that measures shots on goal plus shot attempts that completely miss the net. In the playoffs, only 58.4% of Ovechkin’s Fenwick has actually reached the goaltender, which helps to explain why he has averaged only 3.77 shots per game over the past month.
Although it would be shocking for Ovechkin to have fewer than double-digit shot attempts in a game that means so much, this should be a defensively tight contest, and Ovechkin has simply not been efficient with his Fenwick throughout the playoffs.
Lightning C Steven Stamkos under 2.5 shots on goal (-130)
8:00 p.m. ET
We took a closer look at the Lightning power play formation before Game 4. In the series, we have seen shot attempts on the man-advantage skew slightly more toward Nikita Kucherov (11 Corsi For) than Stamkos (9). Again, Victor Hedman (2) is more of a distributor to his flanks at this point.
Stamkos has averaged only 2.27 (93rd percentile) and 2.66 shots (89th) over the past month and year, and I don’t have a ton of faith in the Lightning getting shots through this Capitals defense. They have accumulated more than 24 shots in only one game this entire series (Game 2) and have averaged just 24.17 shots per game. Given that the Lightning have been unable to generate shots this entire series and the Capitals have limited Stamkos’ chances on the power play, it’s not surprising that he has accumulated two or fewer shots in four of his last five games.
Pictured above: Steven Stamkos
Photo credit: Reinhold Matay-USA TODAY Sports
