NHL Best Bets for Thursday (4/24)

Thursday’s NHL best bets will cover the night’s four-game playoff slate that has a first puck drop scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET.

With our FTN betting package, you’ll get picks from everyone at FTN, plus tools, projections and access to Discord, where I’ll discuss every slate.

• Free NHL Odds
• Free Prop Shop
• Parlay Odds Shop
• Fantasy Hockey Discord

Today’s Best Bets

Tampa Bay Lightning ML

(-118, BetRivers, 2.36 units to win 2 units)

Andrei Vasilevskiy and the Lightning were absolutely lit up by the Panthers in Game 1 thanks to an uncharacteristically poor performance from 2018-19’s Vezina winner. Trust me when I say that this matchup is much closer than the Game 1 scoreboard would suggest. Ultimately, I still have the Lightning as the better team, and they have historically been a group of players who consistently perform well when the games become more important. Thursday night, they still hold the home ice, which is a pretty big deal in this particular matchup considering both teams are sub-.500 away from home ice. -118 for the Lightning ML is super generous thanks to the lopsided result from Game 1. We’ll take advantage of it and take the Lightning ML to win 2 units.

Same Game Parlay

Vegas Golden Knights ML
Boldy 2+ SOG
Kaprizov 2+ SOG
Eriksson Ek 2+ SOG
Dorofeyev 2+ SOG

Over 4.5

(+333, BetMGM)

Maybe SOG ladders aren’t the way to go when you’re playing a guy on a team that ends up with just 16 SOG the entire game. That’s what happened Tuesday night when the Wild shocked the Golden Knights and silenced the Vegas faithful at T-Mobile Arena. The Wild are nearly completely carried by their first line featuring Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy. They were outstanding Tuesday, and I expect them to continue to drive a ton of offense as the series shifts to St. Paul. With that said, the Golden Knights should be fine. As long as Adin Hill is serviceable and his defense doesn’t allow too many outnumbered attacks, I don’t see Vegas losing this series. I put together a nice SGP that features the VGK ML, four relatively safe SOG props, and a safe total (4.5) for a generous +333 payout. I’m playing it on BetMGM, but you can look at the other providers to see if you can cook something similar and for a better price.

Bonus Bet

Vegas Golden Knights -1.5 (+176, FanDuel)

Additional bets may be posted on Discord.

Goal Scorers

Auston Matthews
Brady Tkachuk
Michael Amadio
Brandon Hagel
Brayden Point
Matt Boldy
Pavel Dorofeyev
Mark Stone
Jordan Kyrou
Kyle Connor