Jonathan Davis put his NHL best bets on the board for Friday, May 1, and the through line was simple: back the teams and game states that have already made this playoff night hard to separate. He opened with Montreal’s 3-2 series lead over Tampa Bay, where all five games had been decided by one goal and the last four finished 3-2.
That kind of margin matters because the Canadiens have already turned the series into a grinder. The Lightning have still found enough volume to stay in it, with Nikita Kucherov collecting 22 shots on goal in the series and Darryn Raddysh adding 20, while each had at least one shot in the first period in four of the five games. But Kucherov has only one goal in his last 20 postseason games, and Montreal has scored six of its last eight goals in the series. Davis leaned into that kind of split on a night when narrow playoff games had become the theme.
His other focus was Boston’s series with Buffalo, where the Bruins forced a game six on Friday night after David Pastrnak scored the overtime winner in game five. Boston had scored two goals or fewer in four of the five games, and the first period had been tight from the start: every game had finished with one goal or fewer in the opening 20 minutes, and the first-period under 1.5 goals had gone 5-0. Owen Power’s six-game assist streak ended in game five, while Bowen Byram had taken at least two shots on goal in all five games and Charlie McAvoy had reached that mark in all but one. Those trends gave Davis another angle to work with, especially in a matchup that had not produced much early scoring.
The final section turned to Vegas, which held a 3-2 series lead of its own, and the larger shape of round one. Six of the nine elimination games in the round had been decided by two goals or more, and two of the three one-goal elimination games had been won by the team fighting off elimination. That mix left little room for easy reads, but it matched the kind of night Davis was targeting: playoff games that either stayed razor-thin or opened just enough to reward a specific side. He said it plainly in his setup, “Here are tonight’s NHL predictions and best bets,” and closed with the promise, “We will be back.”
For bettors, the nhl schedule on Friday offered more than a slate of games. It offered a pattern. Montreal and Tampa Bay had been locked into one-goal finishes all series, Boston had just dragged itself into a sixth game, and Vegas still had control of its matchup. In a postseason where margins had already decided so much, Davis’ card was built around the idea that they would decide it again.
