Big menu of NHL betting opportunities on the board for Tuesday and we’ll take a look at the Washington Capitals as they head to Florida to face the Panthers.  This gives us a good opportunity to play one of my favorite handicapping strategies–going against the public perception of an injury or, in this case, a suspension.  Washington will play tonight’s game and Thursday’s game at Carolina without superstar scoring machine Alex Ovechkin.  Ovechkin was suspended for his hit on the Blackhawks’ Brian Campbell in Sunday’s game and depending on whom you ask this is an overreaction or a slap on the wrist.  For our purposes, that’s not really important–justified or not, the Caps won’t have Ovechkin’s services.

Washington is running away with the Eastern Conference race, leading second place Pittsburgh by 14 points.  Florida is one of a pack of teams hoping to make a late stretch run into the playoffs.  The Panthers are currently in 12th place, 6 points back of Boston for the final playoff spot.  Of a more immediate concern are the two teams directly ahead of them–they trail 11th place Atlanta by one point and 10th place Tampa Bay by two points.  With the Thrashers and Lightning not playing particularly well, they’re definitely easy targets.

WASHINGTON CAPITALS VS. TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING

With or without Ovechkin in the lineup, Washington has plenty of offensive weapons.  Both teams have middling defenses–Florida ranks #15 in scoring defense while Washington ranks #16.  Offensively, its a completely different story.  The Caps are #1 in the league in scoring offense averaging 3.86 goals per game.  Florida is a woeful #26 in this category.  Despite Ovechkin’s absence, the Caps are a hefty -170 road favorite.  Where his absence has been factored into the line is the total on this game–most of the Caps’ recent games have been assigned totals of 6′ or 7.  The total here is 6 UN and that’s where we’ll focus our handicapping efforts.

Based on the previous two meetings in the series the total hasn’t really been changed, as they both had a total of 6.  In fact, the three earlier meetings actually had a total of 5′ posted.  Of course its only been recently that linemakers have started to catch up to Washington’s scoring onslaught so you have to think that with Ovechkin you’d be looking at at least a 6′ in this game.  Over the longterm, Ovechkin is very likely worth a 1/2 goal per game if not more.  In the short term, however, I’m not so sure that’s the case.  We’ve discussed the tendency of the wagering public to overreact to short term superstar absences–while a longterm loss of a key player is a different matter entirely, good teams usually can and do pick up the slack in the short run.  For that reason, we expect it to be offensive business as usual with Washington tonight.  3 of the 5 head to head meetings have gone Over the total with an average of 7.6 goals per game.  With a lower total and a nice moneyline value we’ll look for this game to exceed the total.

PLAY WASHINGTON/FLORIDA OVER 6 +100