The Hockey PDOcast - The Stanley Cup Futures Market

Episode Date: February 23, 2023

Rob Pizzola joins Dimitri to talk about the Stanley Cup futures market, the gauntlet each of the top teams in the East will have to run, the uncertainty in the West, and the way the NHL is trying to incorporate betting content into its broadcasts.This podcast is produced by Dominic Sramaty. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate. If you'd like to gain access to the two extra shows we're doing each week this season, you can subscribe to our Patreon page here: www.patreon.com/thehockeypdocast/membership If you'd like to participate in the conversation and join the community we're building over on Discord, you can do so by signing up for the Hockey PDOcast's server here: https://discord.gg/a2QGRpJc84 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

Lessing to the mean since 2015. It's the Hockey PEDEOCast with your host, Dmitri Filipovich. Welcome to the Hockey PEDEOCast. My name is Dimitri Philipovich. And joining me for the first time this season is my good buddy, Rob Bozola. Rob, what's going on, man? Yeah, it's good to talk to you, Dimitri. It's exciting.

In preparation for this show, I went back and listened to some of the ones we've done in the past. I think we've done about four or five PDIocast together. And my favorite of the bunch was actually the first one we did, which was all the way back in December 20th. 18. I was staying in a nice little Airbnb in Toronto and you came over. We had a couple beers. We talked about the state of sports gambling and how it relates to the NHL. And I think at the time in listening to it, like the NHL had just signed a deal with like BetMGM or something. And they're like talking about unveiling all this new tracking technology and data during their broadcast to allow you to do like live prop bets while you're watching games from an arena and stuff like that. And five years later here. not that much has changed. I feel like we could just kind of replay that episode and it would be pretty valid for the most part,

which is interesting, potentially alarming, maybe frustratingly so that not that much has evolved or adapted over time. But here we are. Yeah, I remember that pretty vividly as well. I mean, it's sort of a criticism of the NHL, but not really when you consider the fact that pretty much all of the major North American sports right now

are in that same ballpark where they've just kind of been slow to react. you obviously a lot of advertising of sports books during games, but the product itself is very, very similar to what it was in 2018. So definitely looking for that evolution to take place at some point. But right now I think we're still in the very infancy of sports betting. I know it's driving a lot of people crazy watching the broadcasts and the incorporation of sports betting into it, but it's only going to evolve over time.

It's just a matter of when that happens. I will say, though, I know you're a big NFL guy, watching some of these broadcasts, I believe, like the Monday nighters in particular or whatever, I think they do a really interesting job, not that it's necessarily very, like, predictive, but in terms of telling the story of what you're watching and maybe kind of like giving you, peeling back a few layers of the onion, they like bring up these stats sometimes where it's like, there's completion yards over expected or something, or like it shows like what the probability of this completion happening was based on all these factors.

And I find that stuff really cool. That's something that I think that I was hoping in these intervening four or five years, the NHO would have gotten a better grasp of in terms of using some of this information to tell those stories. Not that it necessarily relates to a prop broad market by any means. But just from that angle, I think that's something where we can be a bit more critical than H.L compared to other sports. It's not an apples to apples comparison, though, because when you look at Sunday night football, Chris Collinsworth is the color commentator on Sunday night football.

and he's a part owner of Pro Football Focus, which is an advanced stats website, and they incorporate a lot of what Pro Football Focus does directly into that broadcast. We typically don't see that with the Thursday night Amazon broadcast. We don't see a ton of it with Monday Night Football. So I think that's just kind of a one-off. That's not to say that football is not moving in that direction. It definitely is. Like the average fan is much more familiar with, I'll call it, like, New Age metrics than they were

previously. And maybe they're a little bit of ahead of other sports, but there's still a lot to be done. One of the inherent challenges with all these broadcasts is that you just have such a wide demographic of people that's watching it, right? You know, you want to appeal to betters, but how do you appeal to betters without making the non-betters upset? How do you integrate something into the broadcast that like is all encompassing? No one's really solved that yet. I think it'll be a while before that happens. But that's, I think, the most challenging thing right now, Dimitri.

Well, I don't think like, I feels like the NHL is. approach has been kind of heavy-handed, don't you think so? Like, it feels like at times they're trying to force it into areas where it's not even really applicable. I do think there's certainly a large part of the viewership that just wants nothing to do with it and views it as like a problem and just doesn't want that to be trickling into their broadcast. And that's fine. I think there's certain areas where you could apply it and it could actually be a part of the process and actually be additive and not necessarily be this kind of like side show off to the side. But for every reason, NHL hasn't really found that balancing act, I think, at all yet here in 2023.

Well, there's a million things at play. And particularly when you're dealing with sports books, you know, you want to satisfy the sports books desire and the needs to have what they want promoted promoted. But you want to do that in a way that promotes responsible gaming. You can't just keep hitting people over the head with the same thing over and over. But really, I mean, I have a different perspective because I've been betting since I was a teenager. So this is, you know, I look at the broadcast. I don't see anything that's, you know, out of line for me or weird. But I will say that it's insane if sports leagues don't want to embrace the fantasy player

props side of things because that's what drives a lot of engagement, right? Like, listen, I'm an NHL fan. I'll probably still watch hockey, even if I'm not betting it on hockey, but I'm probably not going to watch it every night. And if I'm not playing season long fantasy or daily fantasy, I'm not going to be is in tune with the league and the players. So I think they really have to step into that and embrace it. That's definitely going to upset a certain portion of the population, right?

My father watches hockey games on Saturday night. As soon as he sees the live betting odds come up on the broadcast, you know, he's going to have a seizure. It's like what's going on here. But you're not going to be able to appease everyone. I think you have to do it in a way that, you know, the thing with betting is you don't have to hit people over the head with here are the odds and like go and bet this now. you can incorporate betting by just talking about probabilities, how Austin Matthews being injured

affects the betting line and what that means in terms of a percentage, how a backup goalie, Brian Elliott starting instead of Andre Vasselowski in a game, how that impacts the market and what people view that as a downgrade. And I think that's a way to appeal to both bases. But right now that doesn't happen. It's just one way or the other. Well, that's exactly what I'm saying. I think as a storytelling device, there is kind of a balancing act to be found there because

think of, for example, like, over the past couple years, I feel like it's just become such more, so much more commonplace, right? I guess the popularity has increased of, like, same game parley is where you're basically picking all three forwards on a line or on a power play unit to all get a point in that game, right? Or you're playing shot props or what have you. There's ways to not necessarily make it centered around the odds, but to kind of incorporate that into what's happening, especially with the changes that we've seen in the NHL product,

which is that it's a much more. high scoring environment. There's many more scoring events happening as a whole across the league. And so that ties into the kind of growth and popularity of this particular genre of betting. And I feel like there is an overlap between those two that can be sort of more organically integrated into the product. Yeah, I agree with you. It's just you really have to toe the line and how you do that because, you know, same game parlays are a pretty high hold product for a sports book. Typically when you're going to get responsible gaming issues, it comes along with people. who are consistently playing parlayes and losing money in that fashion.

So, you know, there's not a great or obvious solution to this, obviously. And no matter what happens and how this is televised or aired on radio, how it's incorporated into whatever broadcast, there's always going to be a subset of the population that's upset about it or it's not going to appeal to them. But I think that, you know, we go back to 2018 when we first had this conversation about betting. And frankly, the lack of creativity in the sense.

span of five years is what's most surprising to me. I think the struggle I have in watching Canadian broadcasts is they mirror exactly what I watched in the in the US that happened a couple years earlier where it's just like, okay, this is what we're going to try to do. We're going to turn all of our regular ESPN personality. And I'm not picking on ESPN. This is every network that did this, right? But we're going to take our existing personalities and we're going to turn them into betting experts. And some of these people don't bet or they're very new to it. And we're very new to it. And I thought it would be a little bit different in Canada. And the way it was received in the US was probably, you know, not very good. Let's just put it that way. But we have not seen any

creativity. People really trying, you know, to swing for the fences, try something very unique and different. I think it's not in, it's not blaming, you know, the companies themselves. You're working with sports books. They're paying a lot of money. You have to appease them in some sense. You're also working with the league, right? The NHL is specifically telling people, We don't want you to talk about X, Y, and Z on these broadcasts. You can't do it. So there's a lot of restrictions in place. But we've seen the same formula tested now in North America for about five years.

And people just get upset watching this stuff on broadcast. It's not even really appealing to the betters right now, which is when you know it's an issue. I guess you were bump into what you were saying earlier about potentially not being able to fulfill contractual obligations with advertisers and sponsors. but I do wonder if the best solution to kind of have your cake it either to or appease as much of the audits as you can is to just have an alternate broadcast where you like fully go in on it as opposed to just tiptoeing around the lines. Agreed. Like the betcast idea I think works, right? The NFL tried this with Manning cast and they got a lot of people who just went over to that broadcast where it's not traditional commentary of the game. It's Eli Manning, Peyton Manning, just breaking it down how they see it.

Now that's not a betting cast, so to speak. but I think that maybe that's the solution and that we do see two separate broadcasts going forward, one for the older demographic or the non-bedding demographic and one for the demographic that embraces that. I almost think that that has to happen at some point with the backlash that these broadcasts are facing now in terms of the way that they're covering gambling. I think that's a potential solution in the future. But then again, then sports books don't want to pay as much money for that either because

they're not getting the exact same viewership numbers. So you create another problem altogether. But I think ultimately for, you know, in a perfect world, just for the viewership of that broadcast, I think that's the best solution. Okay. Let's get into some hopefully actionable advisor, provide some usable information. So I want to talk about the Stanley Cup odds market with you because it's got, it feels like it's kind of like a high leverage moment in time in the NHL season because we're

about a week out from the NHL. to trade deadline. Theoretically, there's still some significant moves to be made with kind of contenders loading up and potentially swinging the pendulum even further in their direction. Now, when we saw the Leafs acquire Ryan O'Reilly, for example, their standing up odds improved very marginally, I think, especially would surprise someone who doesn't, isn't involved in the betting market at all and just knows Ryan O'Reilly as a former Selke and Konsmyth winner to see how little of an impact it actually had on the team's overall number.

you know when we the rangers acquired teresenko we also saw a bit of a move there so do you think like this is a good time now to be if you're into this sort of thing like reading the tea leaves and then trying to kind of figure out okay where do i think timo mire's going to go he's going to have this amount of impact this gives me a buying opportunity to jump in on whether it's the devils or the hurricanes futures before that line shifts when they make an eventual move within the next week uncertainty is typically an asset to the better. So yes, but you have to do this in a way where, I mean, it's not just guesswork, right? Like there needs to be some sort of quality work put into who's most likely to get this,

this certain player, who has the cap space to pull off something like that. And if you are good at predicting that, you certainly can get an edge in this market. However, you make a good point, Dimitri, like you look at the Teresenko trade, you look at the Ryan O'Reilly trade. these are not shifting the market a whole lot. Dom Lecision from the Athletic, he tweeted out that he improved the Leif Stanley Cup chances by a half a percentage point from the Ryan O'Reilly trade from 9.1% to 9.6%. I'm a little bit higher than that with my numbers, 0.8%, but that's an impact player,

not even moving the needle 1%, so even if you're going to go out and take a shot on one of these teams acquiring Timel Meyer, how much does that move the needle for a specific team? It's probably in the same ballpark, up, you know, half a percent to one percentage point. It's not like you're going to get a super valuable number. So it's hard to say. And you're tying up money for a long period of time, which is another thing as well, right? You're placing a bet now. That's basically like an interest-free loan to the sports book.

If you look at it that way, three or four months interest-free loan that you're tying up that money for. So you can speculate there's certain people who do this. But the NHL market is not one where you're going to see a ton of movement. The only, you know, the biggest trades you could possibly see at the deadline that would move and shift probability a whole lot is a team acquiring a starting goaltender that would drastically shift things because he's playing night in, night out. But the rest of these teams, it's not like the NFL draft, for example. A draft market is in April this year where teams like a player to get picked in the top 10 might move from 20 to 1 to 2 to 1 over the course of a couple days. we're not seeing that drastic of a shift. Yeah, no, that's a good one.

And I doubt along those lines, like a Karel Vemalka or a Eunice Corpusalo, even if they went to Kings, who have been really kind of submarine by their goaltending this season, despite everything else looking perfectly fine. I doubt that in and of itself would shift the market that much to begin with, even though they are technically a starting goalie. Right. And like the things about these trades as well that people need to realize, look at the Ryan O'Reilly trade, for example, right?

Okay, it shifts the Leafs odds immediately. but the Leafs, I'm not saying that they're necessarily done here at the trade deadline, but the likelihood that they can acquire another big name player that's going to move the needle for them is almost next to nothing. So if you don't get that original line move, now that line settles at whatever it is now, Leifes to win the Cup in the 9 to 1, 10 to 1 range for Stanley Cup winner. Well, now you've just kind of lost all the value on the Leafs anyway. So you've got to be very quick to this stuff as well.

if it's a breaking news thing that happens and you think that it's going to make a major impact, you got to get on it quickly. If that trade does happen and you don't get on it quickly, now you can potentially look to other teams exactly like you said, Dimitri, where, okay, this team is likely to make a move. I think they're going to upgrade here. That's not reflected in the market right now. If you want to take a stance on that and you firmly believe that one of these teams is more

likely to acquire one of the big name players, then go for it. But it's not, I mean, it's almost not worth the risk of doing that, just because you're not. going to get that advantageous of a price. So I forget if we talked about this when I had you on last time because it was pretty close to the playoffs as well as kind of this point of the season. But I'm really interested in the idea of whether it's statistically better to or more lucrative potentially to just be playing these series individually once we get into the

playoffs or whether you are better off kind of planting your flag if you really have a lean one away and going in with a futures approach you. You mentioned kind of like tying your money up. that that's one of the issues of course. I think the other issue, especially if you're going the Eastern Conference route, is it's shaping up to be such a gauntlet that I do think it kind of scares me off from feeling confident about any of those teams, even though I like each of them quite a bit for a variety of reasons,

because they're going to come across so many obstacles along the way that it just scares me off from thinking that they're going to be able to kind of jump over all of them without having some sort of an injury or some sort of a random puck-cluck thing along the way that ultimately undoes them. So typically speaking, these futures markets that we're talking about, the sports book has less confidence in pricing these markets. So you typically see this being a higher hold. They charge more. The vig on these types of markets is a lot bigger than it is if you're just betting a game to game on a nightly basis.

So to your point, Dimitri, you know, if you like a specific team or a long shot right now to win the Stanley Cup, and I'll just use a random, say like the New Jersey Devils to win the Stanley Cup and you can find them, I don't know, in the range of 15 to 1 around there right now. The likelihood of you getting a better price if you were just to bet the New Jersey Devils every series in the playoffs is much more likely because there's less Vig charged on that. So instead of placing $100 bet to win $1,500 on the Devils now, the way I would approach that is bet them in the first series,

$100. And then if they win, you take all the winnings and you roll it over onto the next series and so on and so forth, and you just roll it over until a Stanley Cup finals, the likelihood you're going to get a better price is upwards of 90%. And that's the way I think most people should approach it come playoff time, just because those series prices that books put out around playoffs have a lower hold, a lower Vig than the futures markets we see right now.

Okay, I have a devil's question for you because I like them quite a bit, and I do think they are going to make a pretty aggressive move in the next week to improve a potential weakness of theirs. Right now, Pinnacle, for example, has the Rangers at plus 755 to win the East and the Devils at plus 742. But to win the Cup, the Rangers are plus 1,200 and the Devils are plus 1,500.

What do you attribute that type of a gap to because it seems sort of counterintuitive? Is it just purely saying that in an individual series, because it almost certainly will be Devils Rangers in round one by the looks of it based on the way the Metro is shaping up. Is it saying that you like the Devils in a series against the Rangers a bit more potentially or it's pretty much a coin flip, but over projecting the full post season because I guess the Rangers have that history of their run last year. And maybe because of the goaltending, you like their odds over making a longer run. Like that's the only way I can kind of interpret that.

Right. So the answer is that these are treated by the sports book as separate market. So that's counterintuitive to what we think because obviously there's some sort of correlation, right? If one team is more likely to win the series, they should be more likely to win the conference and to win the cup. But when these are priced by sports books, they're moving based off of action in that specific market. So in cases like this, you might just have somebody who has went out and bet the Rangers to win the Eastern Conference, but didn't bet them to win the Stanley Cup or something like that. And then the sports book, or the bookmaker there, we'll see that action come in.

If it's a sharper player, they'll move the line for that specific market. But oftentimes they won't take all the derivatives of that and start moving all of the other lines. So that's where we get all these off market prices, different sports books. That's why I always preach line shopping for these exact same, these exact reasons that you're talking about. Each of these sports books are going to have a different quirk or some team that they're favoring more than others just because of the people that bet at that sports book are. betting that specific team. Yeah, I'm having a really tough time. I don't know if you feel this way as well, but I'm having a tough time myself sort of

wrapping my head around handicapping the Eastern Conference and what I expect from the postseason because I mentioned sort of the gauntlet that is shaping up to be. I mean, I think everyone by now, especially the listen to the show, knows that this top six teams in the league by point percentage and by goal differential now are all in the Eastern conference. Here's a fun stat for you. Those six teams, the top six teams are 106, 29, and 21. against the West this season,

which is like a over 750 point percentage. So there's clearly this massive power imbalance, I guess, skewing towards the east. And unfortunately for those teams, they're all going to have to take each other out, right? Like a team like the Devils,

which I do like, right now their path most realistically is shaping up to be the Rangers in round one, which is pretty much a coin flip, the hurricanes in round two, and then either the Bruins, the Leafs or the Lightning

in the Eastern Conference final, just to get to the Western, to the Stanley Cup final. And that's just brutal. So even if I do like their own team quality, you're going to have to account for the environment around them. And that situation itself is pretty bleak. And that applies to, I guess, every team other than you could say the hurricanes

maybe just because they're probably going to play a wildguard team that's going to be inferior to them in round one. And then maybe they play a team that just went through a seven game regional bloodbath, whoever wins that Rangers devil series. And so maybe their roadmap is a bit. Cushier, but for the most part, each East team is going to have to go through this. For sure. I mean, so I go back to last year and I think about how great Florida looked during the regular season.

Yeah. And they look like a powerhouse. And then they get into the playoffs and Washington just grinds them down in that series. And that can happen to any team in the playoffs, right? You look at Boston for example, like Boston is such a great team in terms of point percentage this year. Overall, what they've done. but they're significantly outperforming most of their metrics because Allmark has been so good, and net for them. And who knows what's going to happen to Allmark in the playoffs?

They had to pull them from early on last year. Now, this is a very different like Allmark, this season, this team. But it's, I don't want to say it's a different beast, but the variance in this sport is so high. And I don't think the average fan realizes that, right? Like there's just so much randomness in hockey. You look at the expected goals percentages in a lot of these series, look at Leafs lightning last year, basically a coin flip. It could go either way, but the lightning win, then the narratives of the Leafs can't pulling it out.

We pull out a big series, you know, they come to fruition again. And ultimately, like, I look at the top end, Boston and Carolina look like the best teams in the league to me. Do I want to bet them, you know, to win the Eastern Conference of prices of three to one, four to one? No, absolutely

not. With the randomness in hockey, I don't want to take a flyer on them. The Rangers are appealing to me as a team, but like kind of we got to pump the, like if we look at the Rangers over the course of the last month, the Rangers are shooting 12% at five versus five over the course of the last month. Second highest team in the league, the Ottawa senators at 10.5%. So it's kind of like any other market, right? I'm not saying that the Rangers can't win the cup or they can't win the East, but they're probably overpriced right now when we're looking at a betting

market just based off of recency bias. So when I'm attacking these markets in particular, I'm always going to look to the team that I think is underachieving relative to what I think they actually are. The devils are the team that stands out to me. Would I pick them straight up against the Rangers in a round one series? Maybe, maybe not. But the devil's going on a month now, pretty middling numbers in terms of expected goals, actual goals.

I do agree with you. And I think that they're very primed to add someone at the deadline here. the Rangers have already done that. So that's the team that stands out to me. But I'm just very much looking forward to the East because there's not much separating these teams. I know Boston on paper statistically speaking, what they've done in the standings right now. They look like the team to beat.

But you get playoff time and it's a different game. The randomness sets in. I really can't wait to see how it develops. Yeah. I think the other thing we probably underrate when you're sort of map out the playoffs is not necessarily that matchups are the be all end all, but I think just because you win one series against the team that is perceived to be better than your upcoming opponent in round two

doesn't mean that you're going to carry that over. There's no like transit of property there, right? I think for a team like the hurricanes, what they've bumped into is a very real issue the past couple years where when they play a team like the Rangers with Shasturkin, when they play a team like the Lightning with Vasilevsky, a lot of what they do offensively throughout the regular season, and have great success doing so does not translate to the same amount of success in the playoffs

because those low percentage shots and that volume approach doesn't work against the two best goalies in the world. And so just because they're better than those teams doesn't necessarily mean they're going to win, whereas they might play a team that's better than the Rangers but has a worse goalie. And all of a sudden, the sort of how I project the series between those two teams wildly differs if you know what I mean. I'm a big believer in styles make fights. and especially in the NHL, if you go back years now and you actually just use the head-to-head

matchups of teams in the regular season and which team won the season series and then solely use that to predict your postseason matchups, you would have done very well. And I'm a firm believer in this. I never played sports at a high level, but I've played a ton of different sports. And there's always that certain team where you just feel really confident in, even if they might be better than you, because you just match up well with them. Or vice versa, where there's a team lower in the standing. and you're like, this team always gets the best of us or they're a really tough matchup for us.

And I do believe that in hockey as well. So I think there's something to be gained from that. But, you know, ultimately, you know, you take Boston this year in the East. Boston as a plus 92 goal differential this year, which is absurd. Now, that's because they've only allowed 118 goals. All Mark's save percentage is Shasturkin numbers last year, if not a little bit better. and you look at the rest of what we call the top teams in the east, right? Carolina plus 44 goal differential. Leifes plus 44. New Jersey plus 43.

Tampa Bay plus 38. The Rangers plus 36. These teams are, there's not much separating them at all. So maybe that is a hidden advantage in that if these teams match up, there's some sort of matchup in like the stylistic play that lends itself to one team beating the other. I don't know exactly what that is right now, but I'm always looking for like the outside the box thinking when it comes to sports betting.

I think two people get hung up on the same metrics all the time. And there's room for trying to understand a little bit more. Okay. Well, so we agree that there's a massive power imbalance, right? All like all the best teams in the league are out east. And that provides this kind of uncertainty. Would you agree or do you think that there is potential way to benefit from that uncertainty by taking some flyers on Western Conference teams that might have an easier path to get there.

Like you're talking about how all of these East teams are kind of huddled together. That's sort of true in the West, just at a much lower scale, right? But it does kind of provide, especially based on the price where you're looking at a team like Vegas, for example, I think they're plus 1,500 as well. They just, they might get marks owned in the playoffs. That would obviously be a big game changer. But they're positioning themselves to create a bunch of cab space to make a big addition, whether it's Tim Omeyer or Patrick here, or who have you.

you, just the fact that it's within their range of outcomes because the quality of competition for them is going to be much lower. So they have fewer obstacles. Does that make taking one of these teams, whether it's them, whether it's the Oilers, whether it's the stars as kind of more of a long shot to win the cup, does that provide an interesting buying opportunity for you? For me, not so much. And the reason why is if there was a team in the West that I think was just going to run the

gauntlet, let's say like Colorado last year, for example, right? And I felt strongly that they were so much better than everyone else in the West and that they were going to have some short series, five, five game series, six game series, maybe even some sweeps or a sweep along the way. I'd be more inclined to do that. But I think that the West, while the quality of the teams is worse than that of the East, I still think there's going to be some wars because there's not much separating the Western Conference teams either. I think Colorado is the best team when they get Kail McCar back, but they're not the level that they were last season. And for all, you know, for all these close series we're going to see in the East, in my opinion, there's not much separating these teams. The same issue is, you know, comes across in the Western Conference, where you just have this tightly, like this very tight cluster of all these teams that are going to give each other problems. So I think we're going to see a lot of six and seven game series there.

I don't think we're going to see a Western Conference team get to the finals and it's going to be they're like super fresh having run through everyone else. That's not to say they can't win. Like think probabilistically always, right? There's always a percentage chance that a team can pull off. A West team could beat one of the top East teams. I just don't see it as all that probable, especially, you know, you cited the stats of the East versus West this year.

That was like a very good betting angle for the first few months of the season for those who caught on. Markets adjusted to that now. But if I'm betting the West, it's more so who's going to win the West rather than a team to win the Stanley Cup unless I think there's egregious odds there. and I just don't see any egregious odds on the board. That's true. No,

the way I was thinking about it was just and kind of why I lined up those two questions or those two talking points back to back was, let's say it was like Dallas came out of the west and Carolina came out of the east. I feel pretty confident saying that Carolina is a better team, but in mid-June in a best of seven series between those two teams,

I think the gap between them is much smaller than people would like to think, and especially because a team like Dallas could very easily follow that blueprint of being very stingy defensively, blocking everything around their net out. Jake O'Doninger have an remarkable series and winning the cotton smite. And I'm not sure if that's necessarily being priced appropriately. Now the stars might lose in five games in round one to literally any team they play because that's how the playoffs work. But that's also especially this year how the West is shaping up. But I do think that the best six teams in the league are out east, but that doesn't, by the time,

it gets whittled down to one and you're just having that head to head in the standing cup final, I'm not entirely sure that it's going to matter as much as it seems to right now. That's possible. Also, you have to, like, the matter in which a team gets to the cup final is going to dictate what the price is on the cup final. Typically, we see teams that just get, you know, their market rating gets elevated so much in the playoffs because they look so good as a playoff team. But to your point, if Carolina and Dallas meet in the finals, I'm not, I can't pull up my

simulator now and just run what I would make the series. But we're probably going to get something in the range of like Carolina minus 200 in that series. And even then, that's, that's 67% implied win probability. It's not like this is like a 90% 10% type of thing. One or every three times those teams meet in the finals, the stars are going to win. The Western Conference team's going to win. This is just a product of the sport. This is hockey. And the Stanley Cup. If you go through year by year, it's not always the best team that wins. It's the best, it's the team that got, you know, hottest or had the best stretch run. And in a lot of cases, we'll look at the Stanley Cup winner and their peripherals are not even all that good. They got very good goaltending performance in a short span or something.

So the randomness of the sport is, you know, needs to be accounted for. I just, again, for me, I'm always, I'm always taking into account the price in the market, right? And if I'm going to go out and bet the stars at what, 18 to 1 right now, best price in market, most sports books are 14, 15 to 1. that's just not good enough for me to have to run the gone to have to win three series in the west and then very very likely be a big underdog to a team in the east yeah yeah that's fair I'm just trying to create some intrigue in the stanley cup final you know and i do i do think it will be there actually but uh okay let's take a break here while we still can and then we're i've got a few other topics that i want to hit with you uh on the way back you were listening to

the hockey pdfest streaming on the sports internet radio network discussing the biggest stories that matter Vancouver sports fans, Halford and Bruff in the morning. Subscribe and download the show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back in the HockeyPediocast with Rob. Before we moved on to something else,

I wanted to just close a loop on this conversation about the West. When I was looking about at the futures market and the Stanley Cup odds, I was a bit surprised to see how much Vegas is still sort of baking in the threat of the abs where

they're a very significant favorite out of all the West teams. And I think from what I found behind only the Bruins, I believe, in terms of the pecking order in the league. Now, on the one hand, they kind of seem surprising based on the season they've had. But then kind of quietly and a sort of under-talked-about storyline is they've played themselves into a spot where regardless of how healthy they get the rest of the way, they have a pretty realistic shot at actually being number one in the Central Division, which seemed like, you know,

a completely impossible task as recently as about a month ago. But I believe they're like five points back now of the stars. They have a couple games in hand on them. They play the stars and the jets two twice each the rest of the way. So they really kind of control their destiny in their own hands. And not for a team of that quality that it matters what their roadmap is, whether they have home ice, whether they're atop the central or not. Because I think they could win from any slot in the West, assuming they were healthy.

but Vegas seems to be pretty confident that that is going to be the case. Now, with that being said, if they were fully healthy, I imagine they'd be like right there with the Bruins in terms of cup favorites, and they're not. So they're adjusting that slightly. But still, like, they're leaning pretty heavily in that direction, I think. Yeah, I mean, typically you don't see this, right? At this point in the year, a team that's third in their division has three to one odds

to win the Western Conference. The next highest team on the horizon is the Edmonton Oilers at six to one. So definitely, I mean, the future markets are not dumb, right? These are people that are betting into it and shaping the lines. And they know at some point Colorado is going to be healthy. And when they are, they are the best team in the West. That doesn't mean that they're going to win the Western Conference. But I think it's priced appropriately.

You get this logjam of these other teams, though, that are in there. And all of them have like some sort of significant fault. Edmonton struggling through goaltending, Vegas, the same thing. Dallas and Minnesota have some scoring issues. Calgary for some like Markstrom has been a problem but they're just never going to live up to their peripherals, right? Expected goals through the roof. Everybody falls in love with their expected goals four percentage.

Guess what? They can't keep pucks out of the net over and over on a nightly basis. But I mean, it's really hard to make an argument against Colorado, excuse me, like at full strength. But there's an assumption being baked into the number that at some point they're going to be at full strength as well. And that might not necessarily be the case. They don't have the depth that they did in years past.

There's definitely more question marks surrounding that team. But personally, Dmitri is not surprising to me that we see them out there. And like you mentioned, it feels like Colorado's had a dismal season. And they're just like they could have the number one seed. Yeah, they really could. They can't. Like Vegas is leading the Western Conference right now, 73 points in 57 games. Colorado won 67 and 55.

They could end with the one seed. And we basically, I don't want to say overlook them all year. but it felt like they were just a shell of last season's team. Yeah, I mean, it speaks to the star power they have where McKinnon, especially recently, and then Rarinton, when he was carrying them for a while, just how great they are. But also, I feel like what we've been talking about, which is the mediocrity of the West, right, where no one really ran away with it. It seemed like Vegas was going to have to start, then Dallas and was in pole position for a bit,

but all these teams have kind of come back down Earth and really all leveled off. And so it is interesting. I'm with you in the sense that I still view them as like the boogeyman, the Western Conference. Like, they would still be my pick just because I don't want to be on the wrong end of picking against them or saying it's not their year. And then coming to game one and you're seeing McCar and Landis Gogh in the lineup there and they're just running up the score on whoever they play.

But it is a bit presumptuous, in my opinion, to just assume that the switch is going to be flipped from a health perspective because it's like all these guys are going to be back for game one of the playoffs. But that assumes that until then there won't be any other new extenuating injuries. and not to mention the fact that Kail Makar is out in concussion protocol right now, and the timeline of that is highly precarious. But there's just so many moving parts. So I guess that is baked in the fact that they're not right there with the Bruins

and there's still gap between them. But it's clear that they've sort of just the potential that they provide is so much higher than any other Western Conference counterpart. And to your point about Makar, this is an injury, a concussion, where we've seen time and time again players across every North American sport return from it and then they resuffer one. And if it's a guy like Kail McCar who's basically, you know, I don't want to say he's your franchise because you have a lot of great players over there and superstars. But ultimately, that's not a guy you're going to rush into action if he has a second concussion.

You're going to take it easy with him. So exactly like you said, the issue with this is that there's an assumption being baked in that Colorado is going to be, you know, healthy at some point. And that's not a necessity. And that's why I would never make that bet. The team that intrigues me, honestly, in the West right now is the Minnesota Wild. because I feel like they found their number one now in Gustafson. And again, I approach a market exactly like it was the stock market. Betting market is very similar, right?

Buy low, sell high. If we want to look at the Minnesota while in the span of the last month, they've played 12 games, do you want to take a guess at their shooting percentage at 5 on 5? It is remarkably low because I know that they went like seven games without scoring one without Caprizo on the ice. So I'm going to guess it's like 5%. It is even lower than that.

It's 4.1% over the past month. Now, they might underperform their expected goals consistently because they don't have enough goal scoring talent there altogether. But you're not going to run at that rate for a long period of time. Water finds its level, right? So it's going to find its level for this team. And I think that they're going to go on a run at some point. Now, are they good enough to win the West?

That's debatable. They probably need to add a piece. at the deadline or do something. But again, all these teams are just so close to one another that it's really difficult to look at anyone in the Western Conference right now and not nitpick something on their roster and say this is going to be a problem for them in the playoffs. Every single team has that right now with the exception of Colorado, but they have that uncertainty in the McCar injury right now as well.

So Minnesota is the team that stands out to me. I've been trying to get in on some futures for them for the past couple weeks or so. The Jets and the stars are struggling to score goals as well. That's going to be the case for both those teams, I think, going forward. But Minnesota, you just can't shoot. Like, it's almost impossible. This is 99th percentile bad shooting at 5V5 over the course of a month. It is, and that's clearly impacting the perspective on them.

I will say, though, part of my concern about that would be just how dependent they are on Caprizov and Zuccarello in the sense that if you get into a playoff setting, it becomes much easier to just load up all of your defensive resources on slowing them down. And then if you have any depth yourself up front, you are just going to absolutely cave in lines two through four for them. And I guess the pushback to that would be there's very few teams in the Western Conference that are positioned to do that other than Colorado, I guess, when they're healthy. And even they aren't as deep as they were in the past. But that would be a conservar. I know their power play has been carrying them in the meantime.

And you're right, you know, giving Gustafin more starts over a flurry. certainly gives me confidence in them moving forward. But I'd be wary in a playoff setting against a really good team, just sitting there with a Minnesota wild ticket and then watching them lose four to two with both goals created on the power play by Caprizov and then absolutely nothing else the rest of the way. Yeah. And we haven't really seen like a, you know,

they haven't really split up Caprizov and Zuccarello on that first line either, which they can do to make it a little bit deeper down the roster. But ultimately, I mean, all these teams like this is to go back to it, I think you look at line three and four of most of the Western Conference contenders, and you'll be like, you know, leaves a lot to be desired. I don't think that there's a huge mismatch coming up here.

I mean, we have to be concerned about, you know, Brodine's been out, I think for a couple games now or at least has an injury for, for the wild on defense and their depth is, is not there either at all these positions. But again,

this is not a, I think in terms of probabilities, right? And probabilistically. and I think that right now people are just super, super down on that team for something that just cannot continue to happen. They cannot possibly shoot at this range for a longer period of time. It will correct itself. And just by virtue of that, I think that they have value.

Well, and they're in a really unique spot financially. You know, they would use some of the cast base on helping facilitate the Ryan-Orally trade and getting a future fourth out of it. I think people were scratching their heads, but it's rare you see a situation where they have so much room to add salary for the rest of this season, but absolutely no wiggle room moving forward. Like they cannot take on any future money heading into next season, but they do have the banked cap space to add some pieces here. So it limits their acquisition potential in terms of like it has to be a rental basically or it has to be money in the future going out to bring future money coming in. so I'm not sure how much they can improve their team. And they were so mediocre for a while there that I think Bill Guerin was like,

well, I'm not going to blow all my draft capital on marginally improving this team that's probably going to lose a round on anyway. But they've won a couple of games here recently. And I think with the general shape or state of the Western Conference, at least in the next week they do have within their range of outcomes, them just deciding to just add an impactful player that can help them the rest of the way, which would also improve their outlook for the rest of the season as well. So I think it's not the worst call I've heard.

I do have my concerns about them, but it is interesting at the very least. I'm also super high on Gustafsson. I think he's really, really good. And just metrics-wise this year, 16 goals saved above expected in 26 games. That's eighth in the league. And he's played like 15 games less than a lot of the other starters there. Now, is that repeatable over time? Does he start to develop a flaw that team start to expose?

That's certainly possible. But you know, you look at the cream of the crop in terms of Western Conference goals. is you have UC Soros probably not going to be in the playoffs. Jake Ottinger obviously is there and like he's going to be the guy, Connor Hellebuck as well. And I don't think Gustafsson is all that far off from those guys. I personally don't. And I think it's been shown in the metrics so far this year.

So I think that's like a sneaky thing where the average fan is not, he's not going to call, you know, Philip Gustafson a top goalie in the league or like a top 10 guy right now. But I think low key he really has. I don't know. I think Hellebuck is so good. And it's a bit frustrating for me because you look at like the Vesna market right now, for example. And Omar is such a heavy favorite compared to anyone.

And I think Hellebuck second. And then it's kind of this like just jammed in everyone else after that, right? Like they jammed in Sorokin. And then it's like, Audenger, Soros, Vasilevsky, you go on after that. And Omar probably will win it because he's like 29, 4 and 1, has a sub two goals against, has like a 940 say percentage. His goal save above expected is really good. But I just, I struggle with, it seems like we are going to be,

he's going to be rewarded for the team success when I think we all agree that it's a pretty advantageous environment for him to be in. Now he certainly held up his end of the bargain. But I don't know how you can look at them right now and be like, plaintiff, Elmerk is a better goal tender than Connor Hellebuck. I just kind of disagree with that. And I thought that's what the Vesna was about. but I guess

I guess the awards market or the futures here seem to be like what we think will happen, which is the voters will go that direction as opposed to what we think should happen based on like merit. I totally agree with you. If I had to vote for Vesna, I would vote Seroquin for Vesna.

I think the numbers that Seroquen has put the, Ilya Seroquen has 43 goals saved above expected in 44 games at even strength. He is literally, or this is at all strengths, he's literally saving one goal per game versus his, like when you put that into that context, the islanders are a dumpster fire. Their roster stinks. And the fact that they're even in contention for the playoffs, in my opinion, I wouldn't even hesitate to vote Sorokin in first. Now, Hellebuck and Almark is debatable in my opinion because I don't necessarily think Hellebuck has carried the Jets. this year, but he's been extremely consistent.

It's just really hard to argue with that Allmark record. It's tough. So, I mean, I wouldn't want to have to have a Vesda vote this year because I'd be the guy that votes Sorokin and I'd have some explaining to do and people be like, how could you, they're probably going to miss the playoffs. How can you vote for a goal? They would, if the Islanders didn't have Sorokin and that, they'd be picking in the top five this year.

They would. The wild thing is that Barlamov's backup has also been probably like one of the 10 best goalies in the league. It's such a good combo. They have an unreal combo of goaltending there. Here's a thing, Rob. And I think this is what's going to be working against them because people see that and like, oh, well, both of them have been good.

I bet you half the voting body is just working under the assumption. This is like the Barry Trots Islanders where this is a good system for them to be in and that's choosing the numbers, which is just not factually correct at all. But unfortunately, in hockey, people very rarely update their priors. And so I think there's just going to be some of that

train of thought. And that's why he's not getting the credit he deserves for the season he's having. So I've bet against the Islanders more than any other team in the league this season. So I've watched a lot of Islanders games. And I can tell you, and I don't have the zone time stats up in front of me, advanced metrics, if you watch the Islanders games, they are mostly getting caved for the majority of the game. Other teams just cycle at will in their end.

They're getting good quality chances. This is nowhere close to the Islanders defense that we were accustomed to from years past For crying out, they have Matt Martin on the first line right now. Like, this is the type of roster that they have put together there. It's just not deep. They're extremely reliant on goal tending. So, I mean, awards markets always frustrate me because I think too much of it is always pinned on team success.

And I don't, like, it's always the talk of like, remember Connor McDavid if you're, like, can Connor McDavid win the heart trophy if the team doesn't make the playoffs? It's like, well, of course he can. he's the most valuable player to his team. You remove him from that team and they drop off more than any other team in the league. That's your MVP right there. And I feel the same about goaltending, right?

I get that, Allmark. I don't want to discredit him in any way. He's had an amazing season. That record is absurd. But if we're just saying, okay, you remove this player from this team who drops off the most, I actually think it's Sorokan if you take him away from the Islanders. Yeah.

Yeah, I do too. And Almark has been great. you're right but that defensive environment across every game state is just so good even like on the penalty kill and everything the bruns have been preposterous yeah i feel that way about the calder market where baneers right now is minus 225 and i really think the gap between him and oen power who's somehow not even second on the list at plus 1,200 is not nearly that that divergent the only issue is that but nears is playing on a team that's winning a lot of games and they're a surefire playoff team and he's got more points because he's a forward.

And just because of the way Owen Power plays, it's not getting nearly the credit it deserves. And so you get that gap. And there's just no way, like he's going to be left off a lot of finalist ballots. Like he probably will finish fourth because there's going to be able to vote like Stuart Skinner. But, but I like if Stuart Skinner had been, if they just switched to him being like the true number one when Campbell was struggling earlier in the year, Skinner would have won the caller because he's had a very good year.

But they keep going back to Campbell because they have to. somehow justify that contract or they have to like try to get him to find his game. But I think Skinner has been very good. And in a year where like you look at the top of the Calder board, I think a starting goalie that led their team to the playoffs with good numbers would have won the Calder this year. So I still think Skinner can win the Calder. Honestly, I don't think it's just a I mean odds from an odds perspective, it seems very likely it's not going to go that way.

But I could see a story being built around them if he has a run down the stretch because it seems like they're going to ride him a little bit more going forwards here. It will. I think his numbers did fall off a bit recently, but yeah, you're right. I think he's probably their superior option. Like, I'd be very interested in seeing that. All right, Rob, we got to get out of here. Unfortunately, I had so many other things that I want to talk about with you, but we're going

to have to save him for another day. I'll let you on the way out, let the listeners know where they can check you out. And if you have anything, you want to promote yourself. Yeah, absolutely. So I own the hammer betting network. You can check it out at the hammer. or you can head over to YouTube. Just type in HammerHQ at YouTube.

Subscribe to the channel if you like the content there, but we do a lot of hockey content daily called Edgework. It's a daily picks show 10.30 a.m. Eastern every morning. So just check that out if you're into it. And BetStamp is my app for line comparison. You can download it on Android or iOS or you can check out the site at betstamp. Awesome, man. Well, this is a blast as always.

Thank you for coming on. Thank you to the listeners for checking us out. We'll be back tomorrow with another episode to close out the week here on the HockeyPedio cast streaming on the SportsNet Radio Network.