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It’s looking more and more likely that the NHL will be back.
The owners, players and the NHL want to finish out the 2019-20 season.
How’s that going to look?
NHL Eyeing Return in July
Reports this week state the NHL is planning on starting games in July. Games will be played at four or five NHL arenas without fans. There’s still a lot of uncertainty, however. We know the players will need a short training camp, but will the NHL jump right into the playoffs?
My take on the situation is that the NHL should start the playoffs.
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Sure, there would be a few teams that get burned, but it’s also going to be tough to motivate teams like the Red Wings to play out the remainder of the regular season. It’d also involve a lot more people to finish the regular season.
With the prospects of the 2020 NHL playoffs starting this summer looking better, we’re going to take a look at the betting data from the 2019 NHL playoffs to identify some trends to follow this year.
NHL Playoffs Betting Data From 2019
We went through every playoff game in 2019 to come up with the following data:
Home teams went 45-42 straight up (SU).
Favorites went 39-44 SU (There were 4 Pick’em games).
Game totals went 39 (Over) – 42 (Under) – 6 (Push).
Home Teams Are Overvalued in the NHL Playoffs
The first obvious observation when looking at this data is that home teams don’t have a big edge in the NHL playoffs.
I went through every game in last year’s playoffs and the home team was the favorite 80 times out of 87. The home team was an underdog three times and four games were a pickem.MUST READ > Betting NHL Eastern Conference Opening Round Playoff Series
So, are home teams overvalued? Let’s look at the numbers.
For the profit/loss numbers I used the following formula:
Bet to win $100 on favorites SU and bet $100 on underdogs SU.
If you did that with home teams in last year’s playoffs you would have lost $1825. On the other hand, if you bet on every away team using the same formula, you would have profited $830.
Clearly, home teams are overvalued in the betting markets during the NHL playoffs.
There are multiple reasons for that, but the big reason is because the public likes to bet on home teams because of the perceived edge they have, and that drives up the price on home teams.
Like I have already mentioned, home teams were favored in 80 of 87 playoff games in 2019.
Bet on Underdogs in the NHL Playoffs
We stress this to our readers a lot, but often, the best bet is to bet on underdogs. I almost exclusively bet on underdogs in the NHL because any team can win on any given night, even in the playoffs.
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While 2019 is a bit of an anomaly, underdogs actually won more games than the favorites.
If you bet on every underdog during last year’s NHL playoffs, you would have made $1815!
That’s an incredible profit for flat betting $100 on every underdog. While you can’t expect dogs to win more games than favorites every year, underdogs almost always outperform favorites in Return On Investment.
What would have happened if you bet on every favorite throughout the 2019 NHL playoffs? Well, you would have ended up losing $2770, which should illustrate why you should avoid favorites.
Game Totals Are Match-Up Dependent
There were slightly more unders (42) than overs (39) in the 2019 NHL playoffs.
Totals are more match-up dependent than anything else in the NHL.
You have to consider how teams play. Do they have great goaltending? Do they play strong defense? Do they rely on offensive production? These are the types of questions to ask yourself.
While it’s commonly assumed that the NHL playoffs trend to lower scoring games because of the defenses tightening up, that isn’t the case, especially in recent years.
What Did We Learn?
It’s really simple.
You need to look past team names and superstars when betting.
Just because Sidney Crosby and the Penguins are favored doesn’t mean they’ll win. You can look at the 2019 NHL Playoff stats to see that. The Penguins played the Islanders in the opening round of the playoffs in 2019 and they were favored in 3 games (1 Pickem), but they ended up getting swept in the series.
Keep in mind, when you bet on underdogs, you can win a smaller percentage of your bets and still profit. If you’re betting on favorites in the –150 to –200 range, you need to hit them at a very high rate to end up on the winning side.
However, as you can see from the data presented in this article, favorites don’t win at a high enough clip to be profitable.
The NHL is unique in that during the playoffs, you can’t count anyone out. In the NBA, playoff series are often much more predictable and you rarely see any big upsets.
