Welcome to my Week 13 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 single 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. If you followed my weekly reports last season, one upgrade is that I’m now logging alt pucklines for every game, favorites +1.5 goals and underdogs -1.5 goals. Click here to see my Week 12 Betting Report.
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My Weekly Profit: $339
Welcome to the end of the first half of the NHL season, which officially wraps today (depending on how you measure; I only count days with games, and this is the season divided by 2). My second Quarterly Report is already well past 10,000 words and will be published in the next 10 days. This was an excellent quarter for me betting wins and losses, but was a loser on over/under. I was having a good week (and was a net winner for the quarter) betting over/under as of Thursday night, then went 7-16 Friday to Sunday. It was a catastrophic weekend, losing -$1,000.
Speaking of “catastrophic”, I was struck by a natural disaster in the form of a Carolina Hurricane. One week ago I was celebrating their run of 15 wins in 16 games, declaring my membership in their fan club, and upgrading my seat on their bandwagon to first class. How’d they follow that up? A winless 0-3 week that cost me -$1,683, which included a spectacular 64-save performance by Nashville goalie Juuse Saros. Obviously my foot is pumping the brake pedal, but it’s plausible these losses were just bad luck. Their #1 goalie is nearing return from injury, and there’s a lot of uncertainty among their gatekeepers.
Those Carolina losses helped make this the best week for underdogs moneyline since week 4, turning a profit both at home and on the road. Betting $100 on every underdog moneyline would have banked you $575, but that could have been $799 if you bet the closing line as the public money was leaning heavily towards favorites. Whereas if you bet $100 on every favorite moneyline, you lost -$739 but if you bet the same amount on every favorite puckline -1.5 goals, you won $511. Favorites won 27 games, 23 of them by at least 2 goals. That’s reflected in my own betting results, as I was a net loser on favorites moneyline, but won $214 on favorites puckline.
While compiling my Q2 Report this week, it blew me away to see that I’ve bet the Anaheim Ducks to win/cover for 9 of their last 11 games. Evidently I had unconsciously boarded the Ducks bandwagon without even realizing it, and in those 9 games, I’m turning a profit. This all simply materialized from not liking the line price on their opponents, but previously I had been betting aggressively large sums on Ducks to lose. One of the explanations for my sudden shift was that 5 of those 11 games were against tired opponents when the Ducks were rested. I rarely bet tired teams against rested teams.
Speaking of which, this was yet another strong week for betting against back-to-backs, which struggled in the second half of the first quarter (or the 2nd eighth), but came roaring back in December. I’m glad that my foot never came off the gas pedal. I had better success on the moneyline, but overall you would have had a higher rate of return betting them on every puckline -1.5 goals (which includes underdogs on the alt puckline). The Q2 rate of return on btb ML is 16%, while -1.5 goals is 39% (including dogs), but betting +1.5 goals barely broke even, generating just a 2% return.
The Toronto Maple Leafs ranked #28 in my first quarter
Power Rankings (ranked by the sum of their performance across all wagers), but with
1 day left in Q2, they are sitting at #3. They are my
pick to win the Stanley Cup, and I have generated more revenue from Toronto
wins than any other team in the second quarter (2nd place wasn’t
close). The Leafs tied with Carolina for the highest winning percentage in the
entire league for Q2, and I have no plans to disembark the bandwagon anytime
soon, but have noticed the line prices getting excessively expensive lately.
The Leaf tax is back.
My Week 13 Results
*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly $100 on every outcome.
If you go back and read my Betting Report from this time last year, it was all about the overs, as the post-Christmas period brought one of the biggest scoring booms in recent history. From Christmas to Jan 8 last season, there were 6.9 goals per game, the average betting total was 5.8 and overs went 39-25-6. Laying $100 on every over yielded $1,060 of profit. This year, there was 6.4 goals per game post-Santa, the average total was 6.3, and unders went 49-46 (hint, there were more games this year in that window because we didn’t have any teams in quarantine).
It did seem as though oddsmakers tried to anticipate a post-Christmas boom by setting higher totals, even though scoring had not been trending in an upward direction. That’s how scoring actually went up slightly (from 6.3 to 6.4), but unders performed better than the previous week (going 26-23-1 up from 23-23-2). Overs were my worst category overall, costing me -$539. As mentioned above, it was a catastrophic weekend to close out the second quarter, and has me contemplating testing algorithm improvements to try to mitigate the impact of outlier games on the recommendations.
The team that threw the biggest monkey wrench into my
O/U results this week was Detroit, who lost all 3 of their games. Their losses
produced a nice profit for me, especially versus Toronto on Saturday, when I
went all in on Leafs vs a back-to-back. But their unders went 3-0 following a
streak of high scoring games. The goaltending had been struggling, but
improved, and otherwise I would have been able to report a comfortable profit
betting over/under this week. My algo also went 0-3 on Colorado overs, as the
Avs had 3 high scoring games followed by 3 consecutive unders.
My Team of the Week: Montreal Canadiens, +$955
One week ago I was commenting on New Year’s resolutions, so decided to look at which wagers had cost me the most money in the second quarter. Montreal overs was near the top of the list. Though upon closer inspection, I noticed that most of those loses were from earlier in the quarter and that I’d done well betting Habs unders in recent weeks. This week their overs went 2-1 and my algorithm went 3-0. Good thing I didn’t follow through on that resolution. But what really drove them to the top of this list was going “all in” on the Rangers to beat Montreal Thursday.
This was also a very strong week for me betting the
correct outcome of Tampa Bay Lightning games, whether betting them to win or
lose, finishing only a few dollars behind Montreal in my team of the week race.
I laid big money on them to beat Chicago, and they did. But on the road against
Minnesota and Winnipeg, I had to take the home teams. The Wild have been hot at
home, and the Jets got half their line-up back from injury in the next. My
algorithm also went 2-0-1 on their over/under, as all the stars aligned for me
to capture lightning in a bottle.
My Worst Team of the Week: Carolina Hurricanes, -$1,683
One week ago the Carolina Hurricanes were on a run of 15 wins in 16 games, which was discussed in my Betting Report, declaring my membership in the “Canes to win” Booster Club. That was bad timing on my part, as the Canes went 0-3, the last two in particular against non-playoff teams were especially devastating. The Columbus Blue Jackets were 1-9 in their last 10 games while Carolina was 8-2, but the BJs managed to eek out a 4-3 shootout victory (where I also lost on the under). Oh well, I hope the people who added Joonas Korpisalo to their fantasy teams on my advice collected the W.
The Nashville Predators had lost 9 of 12 games heading
into this week, but cost me a large sum of money when they went 3-0. What cost
me the most was their upset victories against Carolina and Washington, two
bandwagons I was currently aboard. One of the reasons I love betting Nashville
to lose is that Juuse Saros is on both my fantasy teams, and he plays all his
worst games when I bet them to win. When I had $750 on Carolina, Juuse stopped
64 of 67 shots. The team I bet on should have absolutely won that game, but a
goalie stood on his head. That’s hockey.
2) Underdogs moneyline: +$700 2) Underdogs moneyline: +$575
3) Road favorites -1.5 goals: +$346 3) Heavy favorites -1.5 goals: +$536
2) Home favorites -1.5 goals: -$133 2) Home underdogs -1.5 goals: -$705
3) Home favorites moneyline: -$101 3) Underdogs +1.5 goals: -$701
(over/under/hedges not included) ($100 ML + $100 PL+1.5 + $100 PL-1.5)
2) Toronto Maple Leafs: +$417 2) St. Louis Blues: +$1,144
3) Seattle Kraken: +$382 3) Nashville Predators: +$922
(over/under/hedges not included)
2) Calgary Flames, -$500
3) Arizona Coyotes, -$450
(over/under/hedges not included) ($100 ML + $100 PL+1.5 + $100 PL-1.5)
(over/under/hedges not included)
2) New York Rangers, -$500
3) Philadelphia Flyers, -$350
2) Detroit unders, +$290
3) Carolina overs, +$288
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