NHL Hockey Best Bets for March 2, 2016
A very short NHL hockey betting card tonight with only three games. Two of the three look like brutal mismatches though the middle game between the Chicago Blackhawks and Detroit Red Wings should be entertaining. In a perfect world, we’d have more to work with than one even matchup and two high priced favorites but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt. When life hands you lemons, throw them back and demand grapefruit. Here’s our best bet tonight’s card:
TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS AT WASHINGTON CAPITALS:
The best team in hockey against the worst team in hockey. Obviously, this is a game where you have to assess your ‘risk tolerance‘ for laying a huge moneyline favorite. Alternately, do you give the Maple Leafs enough of a shot to take them at a huge underdog price? This is one of the highest priced games–if not THE highest priced game–you’ll see all season long. So how do we play it?
We’ll start our analysis with what Jethro Bodine of ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’ called ‘cyphering’. Let’s do a little math in order to evaluate where the value is in this matchup.You can figure these percentages out yourself but I’d strongly recommend that you get a specialized odds conversion calculator. There’s quite a few of them available online and you can even get an app for your Android or iPhone. At -330, the implied probability is 76.75%. I often call this percentage the ‘theoretical breakeven’ but it’s the same thing. What this represents is that at -330 the Caps would have to have a greater than 76.75% chance of winning this game. Another way to think of it–if the Caps and Leafs played each other 100 times how many of these games would be won by Washington?
Now let’s consider the other side–looking at my odds screen I’m seeing that takeback on the Leafs ranges from +255 to +270. We’ll call it +255 as it seems to be the most common price. So let’s plug in +255 and ‘cypher’ the implied probability/theoretical breakeven on Toronto: +255 gives the Leafs an implied probability of 28.17%. Toronto’s overall win percentage is 34.4%. Washington’s is right at 74%. Keep in mind that these percentages aren’t the only thing we look at but they do give us an idea on where to find the value in a proposition.
It’s obvious the Caps are the better team and I’m more inclined to lay the big price (or some permutation thereof) instead of taking the ‘plus money’ underdog. Washington is 7-3 in their last 10 and just keep churning out victories. They’ve lost 5 times in regulation at home all season. They’ll give Vezina Trophy frontrunner Braden Holtby the night off but they’ve got an excellent backup in Philipp Grubauer (2.11 goals against, 0.926 save percentage). They’ve also eviscerated bad teams this year with a 24-8 record against opponents with losing records. The Leafs have quit playing for this season in favor of building for the future. They’ve cleaned out as many veteran contracts as possible and doing what Buffalo did last year–‘tanking’ games in order to get the top draft choice. A bad team with no motivation to bring 100% effort is a go against at any price.
We’ll play the puckline to give us a better moneyline.
BET WASHINGTON CAPITALS -1.5 +105 OVER TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS