While they aren’t in the same division, there’s certainly a budding rivalry between the Florida Panthers and Carolina Hurricanes, though it’s been pretty one-sided. The Panthers have knocked off the Hurricanes in two of the last three Eastern Conference finals, and Carolina has failed to extract any revenge thus far this season in losing a pair of hotly contested matchups.
Both teams should feature a high level of urgency in this exciting matchup. The Hurricanes have lost two straight and will surely be desperate to snap that skid versus a team that has more-or-less embarrassed them in recent years, while the shorthanded Panthers are outside of the playoffs and in desperate need of two points.
Our same game parlay comes out to +370 at the time of writing and is eligible for the 30% same game parlay boost offered by bet365 for Friday’s NHL slate.
- Sergei Bobrovsky Over 25.5 Saves
- Andrei Svechnikov Over 2.5 Shots on Goal
- Sam Reinhart Over 0.5 Points
Nick’s Panthers/Hurricanes SGP
Leg 1—Sergei Bobrovsky Over 25.5 Saves
It’s far from a secret at this point that the Hurricanes love to pour everything they can on goal and then attempt to outwork the opposition in terms of puck retrievals and regaining possession with furious pressure coming back up the ice. Over the last 20 games, Carolina has averaged 30.3 shots per 60, which is more or less par for the course of any meaningful sample of play it has had in Rod Brind’Amour’s tenure as head coach, and it has also averaged 31.8 shots on goal per game at home this season.
The Panthers are obviously a better than average defensive side, but with Seth Jones and Brad Marchand now joining Aleksander Barkov, Matthew Tkachuk and Dmitry Kulikov on the sidelines, it becomes a much more reasonable matchup for Carolina to pepper Bobrovsky with shots than usual.
So, the angle I want to take with our parlay here is that the Hurricanes will continue to push for offence in a game that will hopefully feature relatively close scorelines, or ideally a Panthers lead, which is why adding Reinhart to record a point seems fairly solid.
Leg 2—Andrei Svechnikov Over 2.5 Shots on Goal
Obviously it makes sense to target a Hurricanes skater to go over their shot prop to work in line with our need for 26 or more saves from Bobrovsky, and Svechnikov seems to be the most suitable candidate. If you wanted to add to our framework by backing another Hurricanes skater that you are high on to pour shots on target to further pump up the price, that would be quite reasonable.
After a poor start to the season, Svechnikov has recorded 17 points over the last 15 games and has garnered much more consistent usage. He’s averaged 2.9 shots on target over the last 10 games and attempted 4.5 shots per game in that span.
Svechnikov’s shot volume has been down a little of late, but it’s still logical to view him as the primary shooter on Carolina’s top line alongside Sebastian Aho and Nikolaj Ehlers, and the trio has generated an absurd rate of 82.99 shot attempts per 60 this season.
Leg 3—Sam Reinhart Over 0.5 Points
As noted, it seems fairly logical to target the Panthers recording a little bit of offence based on the game script we are intending to hit with our parlay. The Panthers have scored eight goals in the previous two head-to-head matchups with Carolina this season, and Reinhart has factored in on five of them.
With the Panthers lineup currently looking thinner than ever, it wouldn’t be surprising to see Florida’s top line of Eetu Luostarinen, Anton Lundell, and Reinhart play hefty minutes in this matchup.
And due to a combination of shaky goaltending and less dominant defensive play than in previous years, the Hurricanes have been allowing quite a few goals against of late, contrary to their reputation.
Over the last 15 games, the Hurricanes have allowed 3.40 goals against per game, which is the sixth-highest mark in the NHL. Ideally we will see them allow some goals early on in this matchup, and then push the tempo in an attempt to generate some offence, something which they have still proven fully capable of doing recently.
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