2022/23 NHL Week 16 Betting Report

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 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 15 Betting Report.
 
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My Weekly Profit: $2,710
My Season Profit: $13,674
 
The All-star break is just a few days away and my streak of consecutive losing weeks to start the third quarter has come to an end. My slump is officially busted! There has been some recent changes to my methodology, notably to the data feeding my line value algorithms, which were modified to forget first quarter results, looking only at team win-loss records since right before American Thanksgiving. The end result was a strong performance in nearly every major category, aside from road favorites and home underdogs.
 
This was my best week betting over/under of the entire season to date. The new method discussed in my previous Betting Report was the introduction of a secondary algorithm that counts how many times each team went over or under that total in their last 7 games. When the new formula agreed with the old one, I accepted the recommendation 100% of the time. When they disagreed (or it was 50-50), I looked at the game logs and made a judgement call (those were 25% of my decisions this week, going 10-3, which may be unsustainable).
 
Last All-star break I completed an over/under deep dive that birthed a new algorithm that closed the season strong. Another deep dive is planned for the upcoming break, but may simply be a matter of confirming that what worked the last 2 weeks would have been successful in a larger sample. If they answer is yes, that’s the end of the deep dive. Granted, there is no algorithm that can replicate my “judgement calls” so that would be challenging to appraise over a larger sample, much less extrapolate into an actionable formula.
 
At the very least it should be possible to build a set of guidelines to approximate my judgement calls empirically. A big part of my decision making process when the two algorithms disagreed was looking at the game logs and estimating which goalie would be next in the rotation, then counting how many times the games featuring that gatekeeper went above or below the total. At the very least converting my judgement into algorithm form will be an interesting thought exercise. My ability to guess starting goalies is very well developed from fantasy hockey.
 
Unders went 25-21-4, improving their performance despite a small increase in goal scoring. Overs were the second worst category overall but my 4th best, which makes sense given my 31-15-4 record on over/under. Unders were a better investment this week, especially on the closing line. In 10 of the first 15 weeks, unders had a higher payout on the opening line, meaning they were often attracting substantial public investment. That did seem confusing to me, as my daily Twitter timeline seems to express a strong preference for overs.
 
I barely had 3 bad categories to list on my leaderboard below, aside from the aforementioned road favorites and betting against back-to-backs (two categories that really delivered for me the second quarter). This was not a good week to be shorting back-to-backs, which had delivered a profit on the moneyline in 6 of the last 8 weeks. There were 11 rest advantages and only 5 of them won, including a +195 underdog when San Jose upset the Penguins in Pittsburgh. Line prices have been getting more expensive to compensate for the recent trend.
 
For the first 12 weeks of the season,  I was able to generate $1,600 of profit betting the Florida Panthers to lose, but it seemed like that well had run dry after the Panthers won 7 of 10 games entering this week. Well my new line value algorithm wasn’t buying the hype and wanted nothing to do with the Panthers moneyline for their first 3 games, all of which they lost. Saturday they played a back-to-back against Boston and managed to upset the Bruins after tying the game with 3 seconds left. They were 3 seconds away from being my best team of the week, but at least their 2 comeback goals to win the game cashed my over bet.
 
The other teams you wanted to be betting against this week were St. Louis, Winnipeg, and Calgary. The Blues have lost 6 of their last 8 games (including against Chicago and Arizona) and just aren’t a team you should trust either way. They have actually solicited some of my money lately, but only because of how often they’re listed as a significant underdog. I like betting the Blues +180 on the road. One team you did not want to bet against was Anaheim, who has won 4 of their last 5 (though 3 of those wins were against Arizona and Columbus).
 
 

My Week 16 Results

 
*Note* “Market Return” is based on betting exactly $100 on every outcome.
 

This was the best week of the entire season for home moneyline, winning 66% of their games, banking $523 if you bet $100 on each. Only getting $523 profit from winning 66% of games does show that the prices weren’t cheap. This now marks 2 consecutive weeks of me losing money on the road moneyline, after turning a profit in 7 of the previous 8 weeks. This isn’t necessarily the start of a new trend, as home teams were favored in 82% of all the games. That’s substantially above any previous week, meaning good teams were at home and bad teams were on the road.
 
This slowly unfolded into an effective week to bet underdogs +1.5 goals, or -1.5 goals, though dogs did produce a small loss on the moneyline. It was actually longshots (+200 or higher) that drove this most recent trend. Chicago, Columbus, and Anaheim all won games as +320 dogs, two of those hitting -1.5 goals at +750. That’s the only reason that dogs produced a profit -1.5 goals this week (including a little help from Ottawa +425 vs Toronto), so don’t count too much on history repeating itself in upcoming weeks.
 
I personally bet hardly anything on pucklines this week. My strong performance was entirely moneyline driven. Part of the reason for my -1.5 cowardice was getting stung hard by Chicago and Montreal in the previous 2 weeks. That paranoia proved useful, as favorites -1.5 goals was the biggest loser overall by a wide margin. Part of the problem was some crazy line prices if you were betting the worst teams in the league to lose, which was driving me to take longshot moneyline more often than usual.
 
 
My Team of the Week: New York Islanders, +$724
 
It was a close and competitive race in my team of week standings, generating at least $398 profit from 9 different teams with no one squad representing a disproportionate share of the revenue. The New York Islanders landed in the top spot after going 2-2. There wasn’t any conscious strategy or big bets on my part, and I wasn’t even aware of my success until compiling my report Sunday night. It was the result of a high “shooting percentage” on mostly small wagers, going 3 for 4 on their unders and betting the home team in every match (hosts went 4-0).
 
The Carolina Hurricanes were the next best in my personal standings, as they won all 3 of their games. I went 3-0 on Canes moneyline and 3-0 on their over/under. I have managed to officially win back all the money lost in that disastrous week 13 with the -$1,683 loss. The Canes have won 7 of 9 since going 0-3. They even defeated the mighty Bruins 4-1 on Sunday, though Boston was on a back-to-back, so might not have been operating at full speed.  I’m on the Canes bandwagon again, but I’ll be passing when the line price gets a little too crazy.
 
 
My Worst Team of the Week: Toronto Maple Leafs, -$834
 
One of my biggest losses of the week was Friday, placing a large wager on the Toronto moneyline to beat Ottawa. That bet was made before we found out Auston Matthews wouldn’t be playing. The Sens blew them out. It makes sense then that those were my worst two teams of the last 7 days. That loss was enough to convince me to lay a little extra on Washington to beat Toronto on Sunday, which the Leafs won convincingly 5-1. The Matthews injury led me to overlook the “blowout redemption rule” that they’d come out flying in the next match.
 
That one game was the only reason that Ottawa finished as my second worst team of the week, as I pulled a net profit from their non-Leaf games. The Sens went 3-0, beating the Islanders, Leafs, and Canadiens. They were among the best teams if you bet them to win every game, sadly I did not make that choice often enough, taking Montreal on Saturday because of the back-to-back which the Sens blew them out. The goaltending has suddenly tightened up, after being porous for the previous 3 weeks. We’ll see how long that lasts.
 
 
My 3 Best Market Bets of Week 16:                  Overall Best Market Bets of Week 16:
 
1) Under: +$1,081                                                 1) Longshots moneyline: +$665
2) Home moneyline: +$970                                  2) Home moneyline: +$523
3) Longshots moneyline: +$660                            3) Underdogs +1.5 goals: +$470
 
My 3 Worst Market Bets of Week 16:              Overall Worst Market Bets of Week 16:
 
1) Road favorites moneyline: -$448                     1) Favorites -1.5 goals: -$1,114
2) Shorting back-to-backs ML: -$187                  2) Overs: -$684
3) Home underdog moneyline: -$65                     3) Road moneyline: -$600
 
My Best Teams To Bet On In Week 16:           Overall Best Teams To Bet On:
(over/under/hedges not included)                        ($100 ML + $100 PL+1.5 + $100 PL-1.5)
 
1) Tampa Bay Lightning: +$496                          1) Anaheim Ducks: +$1,664
2) Carolina Hurricanes: +$459                             2) Ottawa Senators: +$983
3) Anaheim Ducks: +$407                                    3) Chicago Blackhawks: +$600
 
My Worst Teams To Bet On In Week 16
(over/under/hedges not included)
 
1) Toronto Maple Leafs, -$384
2) Dallas Stars, -$250
3) Montreal Canadiens, -$200
 
My Best Teams To Bet Against In Week 16:     Overall Best Teams To Bet Against:
(over/under/hedges not included)                          ($100 ML + $100 PL+1.5 + $100 PL-1.5)
 
1) Winnipeg Jets, +$345                                         1) St. Louis Blues: +$1,096
2) Montreal Canadiens, +$330                               2) Winnipeg Jets: +$844
3) Boston Bruins, +$283                                        3) Calgary Flames: +$815
 
My Worst Teams To Bet Against In Week 16:
(over/under/hedges not included)
 
1) Ottawa Senators, -$600
2) Toronto Maple Leafs, -$350
3) Nashville Predators, -$350
 
Market’s Best Over/Under Bets In Week 16:  
($100 wagers)
 
1) Florida overs, +$330
2) Winnipeg unders, +$300
3) Vegas unders, +$273
 
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.