NHL Stadium Series Picks: Why the Rangers Are Underdogs vs. Panthers

It.s a quiet four game slate in the NHL, but we do get a Signature Event Big Game Thing, or whatever the league calls it (ok, it's the NHL Stadium Series). 

At least they’ve learned over the years to not bury it against the College Football Playoffs. 

Anyways, here’s my NHL Pick for the day.

NHL Season Stats
Record: 15–21
Units: –5.41

Rangers vs. Panthers

Rangers ML (+130 BetRivers)

Does outdoor hockey in South Florida sound strange? Well, we get to see how it plays out tonight as the Rangers and Panthers square off at loanDepot Park, home of the Miami Marlins. Presumably the roof will remain open, otherwise I really don’t get the point. I love the frozen outdoor games in super interesting venues like Wrigley or a famous CFB stadium. I’ve been to a couple Marlins games, it’s beyond meh.

But I digress, we’re looking for some value here. And I see it on the Rangers for a couple reasons.

For one, there’s just no home ice advantage whatsoever. It's not the Panthers actual arena and the crowd will be mixed at best and if anything will likely tilt Rangers Blue to the extent that matters. And while New York is the worst home team in the league, they are one of the best when they leave town. They’ve gone 14-8-2 on the season and outscored opponents 73-59. They’ve yielded just 2.43 Goals per 60 minutes.

And perhaps most importantly they just got star defenseman Adam Fox back. That’s huge for an extremely top heavy team, especially on the Power Play where they completely flailed in his absence.

By April, Florida will likely turn into one of the best teams in the league again as they seek a 3rd straight Cup. But its January and Matthew Tkachuk and Aleksander Barkov remain out. Yes its a high profile game and the Panthers do seem to get up for those. 

But they just haven’t gotten all that much going this season. They did improve record-wise in December with a 9-4-1 mark, but it came with just a 50-47 goal advantage and 50.19 xGF% that screams league average.

And again, the oddness of the venue is the great equalizer. This isn’t playing a pick up game on a frozen pond like many of these players have done. Its outdoors in mild temps in a baseball stadium. I’m not going to pretend I know how that plays out but I do know I want plus odds and I get the better goalie to boot as Igor Shesterkin (91% Save$, 10.36 GSAA) has completely outplayed the non playoff version of Sergei Bobrovsky (88.8% Save%, -6.67 GSAA). 

Lets Go Rangers!