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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

New Jersey +104 over Washington

1:00 PM EST. On paper this looks like a coin flip, and the market is pricing it like one. Both clubs sit at 4-3-0 with eight points, Washington is home, and the Capitals have been made the favorite at around -127. We get it. Identical records, home ice, a rested team. But identical records is where the similarity ends, because at 5-on-5 these two teams are not remotely the same outfit, and that is precisely where the value lives. A team with New Jersey's underlying profile does not belong at plus money against a team with Washington's, and we'll happily collect the +104 for as long as the market wants to price the standings instead of the play.

Start with the even-strength ledger, because analytically this is a mismatch. The Devils own a 62.4% Corsi share, the best mark in the league, against Washington's 46.3%. Expected goals tell the same story: New Jersey at 63.6% xGF share, again at or near the top of the league, while the Capitals sit at 49.1%, which is below break-even. Scoring chances run 64.4% to 47.6% and high-danger chances 62.1% to 43.7%, both in the Devils' favor. New Jersey fires 35.6 shots a night and allows just 25.0; Washington manages 26.3 shots and gives up close to 30. Washington's 4-3 record has been built on finishing — a 54.3% goals share at 5-on-5 that its chance numbers don't support — and Wednesday was the latest entry: the Capitals beat Montreal 5-4 while losing the 5-on-5 expected goals battle 3.36 to 1.78 and surrendering 12 high-danger chances to the two they created. That is winning on conversion, not on play, and conversion is the first thing that dries up.

The Devils, meanwhile, are finally getting the results their process has been screaming for. They scored 11 goals in their first five games, then hung 12 in the last two — a 5-4 overtime win over Detroit on Tuesday and a 7-1 demolition of the Rangers on Thursday, with Luke Hughes scoring twice and production coming from all over the lineup behind Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier. The honest concern here is in the crease and on the penalty kill: Jake Allen is expected to start and sits at .885 on the season, New Jersey's high-danger save percentage at 5-on-5 is a miserable 73.5%, and the penalty kill is running at only 71.4% against a Washington unit killing 83.3%. That risk is real and it's in the price. But note the flip side of it: New Jersey has built the league's best chance differential despite getting some of its worst high-danger goaltending, while Washington is missing Pierre-Luc Dubois up the middle and is thin on the back end with Matt Roy and Rasmus Sandin out.

So this is a buy on the process at a plus price. At +104, New Jersey only needs to win this game about half the time to break even, and a team that out-shoots, out-chances and out-creates its opponents by these margins wins this matchup considerably more often than that. Washington's results have outrun its play for two weeks; New Jersey's have lagged behind its play all season, and the last two games suggest the correction has already started. We'll take the better 5-on-5 team, with the hotter offense, at plus money

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