NHL Best Bets Tonight: November 18th Top Hockey Betting Picks, Predictions

There's still plenty of time for us to turn our NHL betting season around.

These are Deadspin's top NHL betting picks for Tuesday, November 18th.

Blues at Maple Leafs

We have a battle of two slumping and underachieving teams here. The Leafs traditionally own the regular season and then struggle in the playoffs, much to the chagrin of their monstrous and hockey crazy fanbase, Thanks to the Blue Jays, they white hot spotlight has not shown quite so brightly, but they’re a mess as they’ve lost 5 straight and sit next to last in the East with 18 points in 19 games. Lucky for them it's still pretty bunched and they’re only 4 points out of playoff position.

Their metrics suggest they’re a slightly below average team as they have an expected goal share of 48.4% and actual goal share of 48.2%. But that’s with everyone available and right now they’re without their best player Auston Matthews as well as starting goalie Anthony Stolarz. Further down the depth chart, Nicholas Roy, Chris Tanev and Brandon Carlo remain out. 

Now xG numbers sometimes mislead as teams that lead can go into more defensive postures and trailing teams push to score. When I adjust those xG stats to situations where it's a 1 goal or tied game, the Leafs xG share drops to 44.4%, 5th worst in the league. 

That’s a sharp contrast to the Blues who have an xG% of 52.88% in those spots, 5th best in the league. It also highlights what ails them as they’ve given up 42 goals in those situations, vs. 30.6 expected goals. As that suggests, they suffer from awful goaltending. It's mostly from an uncharacteristically shaky Jordan Binnington and it led to the Blues earning just 16 points in 19 games and 6 points short of the playoffs. 

Something has to give in this game and I’ll go with a healthier Blues team at plus money and bank on “good” Binnington showing up.

Blues ML (+110 Fanatics)

Blue Jackets at Jets

This one is really about price as these teams are much closer than public perception. Well, at least this season as Winnipeg won the President’s Trophy last year. 

They’re 11-7 and have the metric of a weak team with a 46.97% xG%. They also employ the best goalie in the league in Connor Hellybuyck so can get away with that to some extent. Columbus is getting good net play as well from both goalies.

Elvis Merzlikins starts tonight and has a 90.8% Save% this season. Columbus is getting 48.8% of the xG% which isn’t great, but its better than Winnipeg and they’re not ceding any worse in net. I really just like the price here even with the Blue Jackets on the 2nd night of a back to back as the odds give them a 37.7% chance to win and they should be closer to very small dogs in my honest opinion.

Blue Jackets ML (+165 BetRivers)