Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.com, October 15, 2024, 12:00 PM ET
CloseSean Allen is a fantasy analyst for ESPN.com. He is a 2008 and 2009 Hockey Writer of the Year from the Sports Fiction Writers Association. You can tweet him @shonard.
If recent history tells us anything, the Edmonton Oilers are about to catch some wind and sail out of the doldrums.
The Philadelphia Flyers play their third straight game in Western Canada when they visit the Oilers at Rogers Place on Tuesday night. They earned a 3-2 shootout win to open the season on Friday in Vancouver and then lost a 6-3 decision to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.
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This swing of the road in Western Canada is a fairly frequent one for NHL teams, as the league looks for efficiencies in travel. In the previous three seasons, there have been 27 such road trips, where the team would, in no particular order, play the Vancouver Canucks, Flames and Oilers in back-to-back road games.
This season, the pace is picking up pace, as the trip will be made 17 times by teams not including the Canucks, Flames and Oilers. Furthermore, 12 teams making the trip this season, like the Flyers, are coming from the Eastern Conference.
Because road trips are so remote, they take most teams outside their home country for a few days. Given how often this trip will come to Western Canada specifically this season, it’s worth reviewing some recent history to look for any trends.
In just the third game of a 27-game three-game series over the past three seasons, the Canucks, Flames and Oilers have combined to post a 15-12 record. The Canucks are 5-9, the Flames are 6-2 and the Oilers are 4-1 heading into Tuesday’s tilt. Tuesday’s game became especially interesting, because for the second straight season, the Oilers started poorly. In fact, this season’s 0-3 15-3 mark is worse than last season’s 1-2 13-10 mark after three games.
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But in those five games in recent seasons in which the Oilers are the final leg of the trip, they have outscored opponents 26-11 and have easily covered the deficit in four of the five games they have won. Overall, Eastern Conference teams that make the trip are 7-8, but against the margin they are 5-10. Overall, the Flames, Canucks and Oilers have combined to go 17-10 against the spread in these third games.
So, if there’s one trend to watch here, it’s that the Oilers are taking care of business against a -1.5 spread, which, likely due to their poor performance thus far, actually opened at +110 positive.
When it comes to over/unders on these road trips, ESPN’s historical data shows 13 overs, 12 overs and two overs. For games with a total of just 6.5, the number has been higher four times and the number is lower than seven. Tuesday’s mile opened at 6.5 with -105 at the top and -115 at the bottom. This decently reflects the recent history of these matchups, but it will be worth checking back closer to game time to see if it’s starting to get tempting, given the Oilers’ history of averaging 7.40 goals in these third matchups (the overall average is 5.96).
Jake Neighbors plays a prominent role for the Blues. Caean Couto-Imagn Images Fonts
Minnesota Wild at St. Louis Blues
7:30 p.m., Enterprise Center, watch live on ESPN
Blues (-1.5, +210), -115 moneyline.
Wild (+1.5, -300), -105 moneyline.
Total 5.5: (over -125, under +105)
Stills
This opened with the Wild as the road favorite on Monday, but perhaps due to a lack of information on the injury cases of Joel Eriksson Ek and Jared Spurgeon, the odds have flipped, with the Blues being the favorite as of 9 a.m. Tuesday. We could see more volatility in this coin toss game if news of Eriksson Ek or Spurgeon emerges.
If you’re looking for props, Ryan Hartman for a point (over 0.5 points, +135) is promising, as he will probably play Eriksson Ek’s role on the second line and the top power play unit. Maybe you can combine that with Jake Neighbors (over 0.5 points, +115) for a +381 investment, as Neighbors remains on top with the best power play minutes, but he still doesn’t get the love he needs.
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Philadelphia Flyers at Edmonton Oilers
10 p.m., Rogers Place, watch live on ESPN
Oilers (-1.5, +105), -240 money line.
Posts (+1.5, -125), +200 Moneyline.
Total 6.5: (more than -110, less than -110)
Stills
The low odds moved from -115 to -110 overnight into Tuesday, which is tempting given the Oilers’ scoring struggles so far. But, as stated above, there is reason to believe the Oilers can emerge from their current mess.
The Flyers will almost certainly return goaltender Samuel Ersson, not just because he has been solid and Ivan Fedotov has struggled, but because the team will likely be closer to 50-50 this season. Connor McDavid had five points the last time the Flyers visited, on Jan. 3 of last season.
Considering that the play could be to support the Oilers offense. The cheap one is Jeff Skinner (0.5 points, +115), who is not far from the chances of finding chemistry with McDavid on the top line. If you like the Oilers, an investment option might be to back Skinner and fade Travis Konecny (under 0.5 points, +115) for a combined +325 profit.
Betting trends
The plan for this article, every other week, will be to take a look at some of the recent trends in the NHL when it comes to odds vs. outcomes.
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It may go through some iterations until we find the most useful information for me to share, but for now, I’ll explain a little about the type of data we’ll be getting. To get started, I capture spreads, over/under, and moneylines from ESPN BET four times a day to start building a database of odds. The idea is to compare how they compare to actual results as the season progresses and we can look to identify areas that need to be addressed together.
As a little introduction this week, let’s do sports betting 101 with the basics of spread:
Spread is when you bet either that the favored team will beat its opponents by the specified spread, or that the underdog will either win or at least keep the game within a margin of defeat of less than the spread. Normally, the spread will be set at 1.5. On rare occasions in a pre-game scenario, we might see 2.5, but unless the game is underway, we should see 1.5 deployed the vast majority of the time.
For the favorite team, or the team expected to win, the spread in front of them will receive a minus sign, such as -1.5, to indicate how many points they must win for a bet on them to be successful. Conversely, the underdog will have a plus sign, such as +1.5, indicating that it can either win the game outright or lose by fewer points than the spread.
Each of these distinctions, whether for the favorite or the underdog, will be accompanied by probabilities. In a spread scenario, the underdog has the advantage, and this is confirmed by the odds and results. Of the 42 games of data collected as of Monday evening, the favorites are 15-27 against the spread, while 20 games have odds of +150 or greater for the favorite (in general, the higher the odds, the higher the odds of winning). Before sports books).
Conversely, the underdogs are 27-15 against the spread with all but two of the 42 games offering lower odds on the underdog spread; In fact, 17 of the games offered -200 or less.
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Using odds data collected as of Tuesday morning, you can take a look at what the difference would be for someone placing a $1 bet on each match:
Putting $1 on each favorite in the spread would have netted $26.17 on 17 wins and $28 losses for a net result of -$1.83.
Putting $1 on each underdog in the spread would have yielded $16.71 on 28 wins and $17 losses for a net result of -$0.29.
This is not a great strategy of course, which is why we will be looking for deeper trends as the season progresses.
As a starting point, think about your favorite scenario on the road.
When favored at home this season, he has covered the gap just 11 out of 32 times (34%). But when the favorite is on the road, they’ve covered six out of 13 (46%). It’s not a huge improvement, but it’s worth noting this early in the season.
Aside from the aforementioned Blues, we have another favorite on the road, as the Vegas Golden Knights (spread -1.5, +175) take on the Washington Capitals (spread +1.5, -225). The capital side will be without stalwart defender Matt Roy, who is expected to leave next week. Just watch out for those intangibles, as Logan Thompson will make his Capitals debut against his former team. This is the kind of personal story that can send possibilities going out the window.
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