Welcome to my Week 16 NHL Betting Report, featuring my Gambling Power Rankings, results by category, my best bets, and my best/worst teams to bet on or against. It should be noted that I’m not betting with real money. These are all fictional wagers in a spreadsheet. If you’re betting with real money, you should not be betting on every game, only the games you like the most. Whereas I’m betting on every game, every over/under, because it provides a complete dataset for macroeconomic analysis. Click here to see my Week 15 Betting Report, or visit my second Quarterly Report for more in depth team by team analysis.
For the purposes of this report, “week 16” refers to the 14-day stretch from Jan 31 to Feb 13 that included an absence for the All-Star break. Most of my January success was being driven by favorites. The team that was favored on the betting lines won 72% of January games. That has dropped to 55% in February. Underdogs have started to strike back, which is something we also saw in the second half of 2019/20. Thankfully for me, the Montreal Canadiens continued to suck, and betting them to lose was the only thing that kept me above zero for the week. The other category that padded my profits were overs.
During the all-star break I took advantage of the lull in action to do some over/under modelling based on first half results, and empirically tested a new algorithm that produced superior results than the previous version. The original took the % of each team’s 10 previous games that went over the total, then subtracted implied probability of the betting line, selecting the one offering the most value. The rate of return through 268 games was 2.5%. The new method takes average goals per game over each team’s previous 5 games; then subtract the betting total. Simply bet over for >=0 and under for <0. Ignoring the odds offering and focusing solely on the total produced a better return.
The early results thus far show the two algorithms agreeing on the same wager in 73% of games, disagreeing more often on the size of the bet. I just had one of my best weeks for over/under betting, but it was driven almost entirely by overs, which had a big week. There was an increase in scoring coming out of the all-star break, just as there was a scoring bump after Christmas. Inactivity appears to have a negative impact on goal prevention, which surely has more to do with goaltending than shooting. If you bet every under, you got destroyed, but I managed to generate a tiny profit on my under bets (thanks entirely to going +$609 on Ottawa unders).
The other addition to my betting spreadsheet over All-Star weekend were columns to keep a record of closing lines. I’ve been noticing a substantial amount of line movement on game day this season, and I’d like to quantify the value of shifting prices. When a line moves from X to Y, what is the rate of return for both X and Y? When lines move after the initial public offering, it’s a reaction to the action coming in on one side or the other. The sportsbooks track the betting habits of their most successful accounts, and use them as barometers to determine which direction a line needs to move.
My bets are logged the day before games, before most books have even posted their lines. I’ll often default to Draft Kings simply because they publish early. The line price I’m recording tends to be very close to the “opening” number. The “line movement” sample is still too small to report results, but the lines seem to tend to move in the direction of my wager. Though when I write in my notes “the line is too high but I’m betting it anyway”, it tends to move in the opposite direction.
My Week 16 Results
*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly
$100 on every outcome.
One trend that began before the all-star break and continued afterwards was increased profitability of underdogs. This was being primarily driven by an increase in road winning percentage, both by underdogs and favorites. Home teams have been performing well all season, which has diminished the payouts being offered by sportsbooks. Visitors were favored in just 38% of games from Jan 1 to Feb 11, but won 48%. It remains to be seen if this trend has legs, or if it’s just random variance. If you laid $100 on every single road moneyline this week, you banked nearly $1,000.
We have also seen 3 consecutive weeks of negative
returns on favorites -1.5 goals on the puckline. As discussed in previous
reports, the early returns of this category were substantially higher than the
previous 2 seasons, and was being fueled by an increase in empty net goals.
This wounded me as an advocate for underdogs +1.5 goals, which have been a boon
for me in the past. Scoring was high in week 16, but it wasn’t necessarily the favorites
scoring the surplus goals, lowering the return for the whole category.
My Team of the Week: Montreal Canadiens, +$1,606
While the Coyotes and Kraken may have exceeded my expectations this week, the Montreal Canadiens did a marvelous job of being themselves, going 0-4. My total profit league-wide for the week was $1,198, but I was a net loser on all the non-Habs games. My biggest win of the week was putting $500 on the moneyline and $500 on the puckline for Washington to win/cover, and they did 5-2. Later I put $500 on the Blue Jackets to win and $250 on the Sabres to win, which both did. Montreal fired their coach, and are dead last in league standings. I’m selfishly hoping that Martin St. Louis is a terrible coach.
My second-best team of the week was the Calgary
Flames, who have been on a heater winning 6 games in a row, with me along for
the ride. Unfortunately, I chose the wrong side of their game against Toronto,
but that was more than offset by going 4-0-1 on Flames overs for $519 in
profit.
My Worst Team of the Week: Arizona Coyotes, -$1,060
The Arizona Coyotes were my worst team of the week after Friday’s games, and were inactive during the weekend. The Colorado Avalanche had a shot to take the top spot if they failed to defeat Dallas on Sunday, but they pulled off a victory with MacKinnon returning to the line-up. The Avalanche and Coyotes were both in contention specifically because the Yotes prevailed when they clashed before the All-Star break. Arizona played Tampa on Friday, and I laid $500 moneyline and $500 puckline, with $200 on the over. The Lightning barely won by a goal, so the ML (with a low payout) won, but the other two lost.
My one big win on Arizona came in their loss to
Calgary, but those gains were wiped out by losing -$409
on Coyote unders. Arizona actually won 2 games this week, the 2nd coming against Seattle when my money was on the Kraken at home. Coincidently
the Kraken were my second worst team of the week, but that wasn’t because they
sucked. Rather they managed to pull off a few upset victories that cost me some
large wagers. Philipp Grubauer has started playing decently (.911 SV% over the
last 30 days) which diminishes my enthusiasm for betting them to lose.
2) Road moneyline: +$1,327 2) Calgary to win ML+PL: +$764
3) Over: +$827 3) Road underdogs +1.5 goals: +$488
2) Seattle to lose ML: -$800 2) Home moneyline: -$1,162
3) Arizona to lose ML+PL: -$734 3) Calgary to lose ML+PL: -$858
My Best Teams To Bet On In Week 16: (over/under not
included)
1) Calgary Flames, (+$739)
2) Columbus Blue Jackets, (+$638)
3) Dallas Stars, (+$470)
My Worst Teams To Bet On In Week
16: (over/under not included)
1) Colorado Avalanche, (-$697)
2) Toronto Maple Leafs, (-$603)
3) Nashville Predators, (-$500)
My Best Teams To Bet Against In Week
16: (over/under not included)
1) Montreal Canadiens, (+$1,465)
2) Chicago Blackhawks, (+$578)
3) Buffalo Sabres, (+$377)
My Worst Teams To Bet Against In Week
16: (over/under not included)
1) Seattle Kraken, (-$800)
2) Arizona Coyotes, (-$734)
3) Calgary Flames, (-$458)
Team By Team Power
Rankings
These power rankings are based on the sum of all my bets per team, including
where the money was won or lost. Each week my new power rankings will be based
on all the games in the season, not just what happened this week.
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