The start of the NHL season has been positively batty, upending expectations for many putative powerhouses. The Calgary Flames, St. Louis Blues, Pittsburgh Penguins, New York Rangers, and Minnesota Wild have all stumbled into holes of varying depths. If the playoffs started as of this writing, the Philadelphia Flyers, Seattle Kraken, and Arizona Coyotes would make it. 

With the hockey world topsy-turvy, I’ve sought out more predictable outcomes. This means taking unders for players whose scoring prospects I’m bearish on.

Arizona Coyotes at New Jersey Devils
Saturday, November 12 – 7:00PM ET 
After a grim 1-4 start to the season, the plucky Coyotes are on a roll, having won five of their last eight games. Despite an undeniable paucity of talent and gruesome advanced stats, the Coyotes have proven to be oddly difficult to play against. 

On Thursday night, the Coyotes outshot the New York Islanders at 5-on-5 and doubled them in high-danger chances. Arizona leaned on the forecheck and cycle and tallied a power play goal. The Coyotes played a passive neutral-zone forecheck and made sure they weren’t outnumbered when the Islanders had the puck on the attack. 

But the Devils are blistering hot. New Jersey is riding an eight-game win streak and has a compelling case for looking like the best team in the league through the first month. The Devils have the best advanced stats. They have a gaudy +15 goal differential despite losing Ondrej Palat early on to a long-term groin injury.

The Coyotes can’t play with the Devils at 5-on-5. Arizona ranks last in high-danger chances created per hour while New Jersey is the best in the NHL at preventing high-danger chances. Goals will be scarce for Arizona, and two players jump out as appealing to wager against: defenceman Shayne Gostisbehere, a former Flyers favorite who fell out of favor, and journeyman center Travis Boyd. If either does register a point, it’s probably coming on the man advantage.

The Coyotes have the third best power play in the NHL. Against New York, the Coyotes used Boyd, who is their net front presence, as a facilitator and shooting option. On the power play opportunity that registered a goal against the Islanders, Arizona first looked to Boyd to try a low slot backdoor feed to Gostisbehere, but it was denied. When that set play failed, the Coyotes’ best player, Clayton Keller, slipped a pass into the crease that Boyd jammed past Ilya Sorokin. 

Although Boyd has a point in his last three games, I’m dubious he makes it four. The Devils have a top ten penalty kill, and if they can shut off Arizona’s looks down low, I don’t see either Boyd or Gostisbehere registering a point. 

The Coyotes play with eleven forwards and seven defencemen, and coach André Tourigny has shown that he likes to play Boyd with Clayton Keller, who is the Coyotes’ most skilled forward and a proficient scorer. But New Jersey will be at home and have the last change, and I suspect they will be eager to neutralize Keller. 

As for Gostisbehere, he has impressive stats on the season, but he is a boom or bust player. He has points in only five of 13 games this season; it just happens that four of those games were multipoint games. In Goals Above Replacement, Gostisbehere measures unfavorably, albeit better than Boyd, who is an eyesore in the metric.

I think the Coyotes are going to struggle to create offence, and the Devils playing third-string goaltender Akira Schmid doesn’t frighten me. I like both Boyd and Gostisbehere to be held off the scoresheet.

Picks: Travis Boyd U 0.5 points -156, Shayne Gostisbehere U 0.5 points -158

Columbus Blue Jackets at New York Islanders
Saturday, November 12 – 7:30PM ET 
Everything is going wrong for the Columbus Blue Jackets. They have the second- worst points percentage and goal differential in the league. They are besieged by injuries. In advanced stats, they are woeful. They have two goaltenders, neither of whom are good. And they are a bad road team that is traveling to New York for Saturday’s tilt.

I like taking the under 0.5 points for center Jack Roslovic and left wing Gustav Nyquist because several factors are converging to make this a tantalizing option. First, Columbus coach Brad Larsen is bent on pairing Johnny Gaudreau and Patrik Laine on the first line, leaving Columbus dangerously vulnerable from a talent perspective with their bottom-nine forwards. 

The injuries to Jakub Voracek and Kent Johnson prompted Larsen to reconfigure the second and third lines, with fringe NHLer Emil Bemstrom thrust into second-line duties alongside Roslovic and Nyquist. While the trio allowed a goal on Thursday, they gave a decent effort. The Blue Jackets are dangerous on the attack when they can whoosh through the neutral zone with speed. In Thursday night’s win for the Blues Jackets, Philadelphia’s turnovers in the offensive zone, and ineffective forecheck, gave Columbus chances to strike off the rush.

That won’t happen against New York. The Islanders are going to force the Blue Jackets to work hard on their zone exits with a persistent forecheck. I think Columbus will find much less space against New York, especially in transition. The Roslovic line can get skittish under pressure, and while the Islanders are a below- average advanced stats team, Columbus is going to be missing Zach Werenski and Nick Blankenburg, who entered Thursday night as the Blue Jackets’ top pair. The Blue Jackets had a weak defensive group to start the season; it is now catnip for opponents.

Adding to the Blue Jackets’ travails is the prospect of trying to score against Ilya Sorokin. Sorokin ranks second in Goals Saved Above Expected (GSAx) and looks like a possible 2023 Vezina Trophy finalist. I think that, smarting from a bad loss to the Coyotes at home, the Islanders will grind out an ugly victory on Saturday and blank Roslovic and Nyquist in the process.

Picks: Jack Roslovic U 0.5 points +100, Gustav Nyquist U 0.5 points -130

St. Louis Blues at Vegas Golden Knights
Saturday, November 12 – 10:00PM ET 
I’m not sure what this says about me, but few things make me happier than when a player’s reputation exceeds his output and the betting market is slow to adjust. You see it happen in sports all the time, and it may be happening to the Blues’ Ryan O’Reilly right now. 

O’Reilly is being used as a third-line shutdown center. He doesn’t play first unit on the power play. He has two points on the season and isn’t a threat off the rush. On Thursday night, he played with Brandon Saad and Josh Leivo. The line potted a goal, but that was a result of his teammates’ dirty work. O’Reilly was covering up high for the defenceman for most of the time spent in the offensive zone. 

O’Reilly, Saad, and Leivo didn’t exactly impose their will against the Sharks’ best line. They were outshot 2-11, allowing seven scoring chances while registering zero. The line’s more exciting transition looks came when defencemen Torey Krug and Justin Faulk spearheaded the entries. 

Vegas’s Phil Kessel has more scoring prowess than O’Reilly at this juncture, but he finds himself in a similar situation. A former star player in the twilight of his career, he is now relegated to a bottom-six role. 

Against the Sabres on Thursday night, Kessel played with Brett Howden and Paul Cotter and Buffalo nearly quadrupled Vegas in shot attempts at 5-on-5 when the Kessel line was on the ice. Kessel’s game currently is living above the puck, and because he has keen anticipation and is still an above-average skater, he puts himself in scoring position. This was true for the odd-man rush goal he scored on Thursday when he shot up the weak side and caught a pass from Nicolas Roy. Will that work against the Blues?

After losing eight straight, the Blues finally won on Thursday against the Sharks and they looked better. Earlier in the week, their forecheck looked sluggish and their one-man rush chances were easily foiled. Against San Jose, they were able to retrieve the puck and offer a more full-throated rush attack. 

But the Blues’ peculiar reluctance to embrace the flip pass when stuck in their own end saw them cough up pucks on breakouts that would lead to goals. St. Louis very consciously looks to use the stretch pass whenever possible, but with how well Vegas’s forwards backcheck, I’m not sure those lanes will be there. Ultimately, I see this game producing a lot of cycle action from the Golden Knights, which isn’t conducive to either O’Reilly (who would be defending) or Kessel (who needs to be sprung on the rush) scoring.

 The argument for O’Reilly isn’t complicated. Bet against the checking center playing against the best team in the NHL in goals against. For Kessel, it can be boiled down to fading a third-line winger who has six points in 15 games. 

Picks: Ryan O’Reilly U 0.5 points -150, Phil Kessel U 0.5 points -164