The NHL has a four-game Friday slate, which offers several enticing plays on the player prop market and a team in an exciting Eastern Conference showdown. Let’s dive into the best bets, and for more of the best NHL bets and NHL props, be sure to check out the OddsShopper tool.
NHL Bets for Tonight | Dec. 30
Florida Panthers Moneyline +145 vs. Carolina Hurricanes
The suddenly healthy Florida Panthers offer the single most likely target to find significantly better results moving forward in the season’s back half, for a variety of reasons. Florida has regularly skated without its best player in captain Aleksander Barkov, and the significance of Barkov’s absence has often been compounded by absences to other top centers such as Anton Lundell.
With the majority of the roster finally healthy heading out of the Holiday break, yesterday’s game against the Canadiens proved to be a smash spot, as the Panthers skated right through the lowly Canadiens on route to a 7-2 victory. The beauty of that win was that it allowed Florida to spread the minutes out among the entire roster, as Barkov was the only forward even to hit the 18-minute mark for time on ice.
Spencer Knight has been the better of the Panthers’ two goaltending options this season, and he will start in this game over Sergei Bobrovsky. Knight will oppose Antti Raanta, who has a -2.9 goals saved above expected rating and save percentage of just .894 through 13 games. That offers a goaltending edge to the Panthers, who have a breakeven control of play over their last 10 games despite playing short a ton of key bodies.
Fading a Hurricanes team that has won nine straight is not fun, but the majority of Carolina’s recent games against other top teams have actually been extremely close, and a key factor in many of those wins was the play of Pyotr Kochetkov in goal.
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Dougie Hamilton Over 3.5 Shots on Goal +132
A number of factors are at play that make Dougie Hamilton a very enticing shot prop target at this long number. First, with Ryan Graves and John Marino both absent from the Devils blue line, Hamilton is likely to continue seeing a slight uptick in time on ice due to the fact that the Devils are now skating a third pairing that is likely to play heavily sheltered minutes.
Second is the fact that an abnormally high number of attempts of Hamilton’s attempts have been blocked or missed the net recently, which has led to an average of just three shots on goal over his last seven matchups. A number of those matchups have also come against a number of excellent defensive teams such as the Bruins (twice), Hurricanes, Stars and a sneakily solid defensive unit in the Panthers (twice).
Over Hamilton’s last two games against a spectacular Bruins defense, he managed 19 shots, seven of those which were unblocked, but only three reached the target. Shot-minded defensemen such as Hamilton will always see more shot attempts miss than other skaters will, but seeing just 15% of attempts on target is still incredibly low and due for an uptick.
Hamilton will now skate in a significantly better matchup for shot production against Pittsburgh, and this sets up as a perfect buy-low spot for a guy trending well below his large sample size.
