Top NHL Betting Pick For Tuesday, October 12th (2021)
It’s been a long time away, but the NHL is finally back, and we have an awesome opening night on tap. The two-time defending champion Tampa Bay Lightning will raise another banner to the rafters before kicking off the 2021-22 season. They’ll host the Pittsburgh Penguins at Amalie Arena, and to cap off the night, the NHL’s two newest teams will battle in Las Vegas. The Golden Knights will begin their fifth season by hosting the league’s latest expansion franchise, the Seattle Kraken, in their first-ever regular-season game.
There are just two games on the docket, both featuring heavy moneyline favorites, so the opening night pickings are slim from a betting perspective. We’re coming off a 15-9-1 record, and a 4.3 unit profit last NHL season, so let’s start this year as hot as we finished last. Here’s my best bet for opening night.
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Tampa Bay Lightning / Pittsburgh Penguins Under 6 (-104)
The best line is currently on FanDuel, but there are plenty of other books like BetMGM and PointsBet that have this under at -105. A few spots have a 6.5 posted, but the under is juiced all the way to -130; I’d rather not lay the extra 25 cents for a half-goal.
When you think of the Lightning, the first thing that comes to mind is the plethora of offensive weapons this team has at their disposal, and that’s part of the reason why I think this number is a half-goal higher than expected. But Tampa Bay is sneakily a fantastic defensive team. They allowed just 1.96 goals per game in their playoff run, and that was against strictly playoff-caliber competition. Now they’ll be facing a Penguins team who’ll be without… everyone.
Sidney Crosby won’t play on Tuesday as he recovers from offseason surgery, and top playmaker Jake Guentzel also won’t dress. On top of their two first-liners, Evgeni Malkin will miss the first two months of the year, so obviously, he’ll be out tonight, but Zach Aston-Reese, an important bottom-six forward, will also watch this one from the press box. Pittsburgh is really going to struggle to generate offense against a top defense and the best goaltender in the NHL.
Tampa Bay is also going through a transition. After being $18 million over the salary cap last year, the Lightning had to shed some players, and there were some important cap casualties. They lost their entire third line of Blake Coleman, Barclay Goodrow, and Yanni Gourde – a line that many around the team felt was the backbone of their consecutive titles. Tampa also lost Tyler Johnson, a fourth-liner sure, but a glue guy in the locker room and one of the team’s key energy players. The big names like Brayden Point and Nikita Kucherov are still in the fold, but the Lightning will have to break in a bunch of new players on the fly, and I suspect the chemistry won’t be there right off the bat.
These two teams also haven’t played each other since the 2019-20 season after last year’s schedule featured division games only. There’s going to be a feeling-out process and a lot of cautious play early in this game, and even if the pace picks up, I don’t think there will be enough steam to push six or more goals across the line. Play this one down to -115, and take the under in the 2021-22 season’s opening game.
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Mike Wagenman is a featured writer at BettingPros. For more from Mike, check out his archive and follow him on Twitter @mjwags23.