Few professional sports are as difficult to predict from one season to the next as the NHL. Each year brings\u00a0surprise playoff teams, unexpected declines,\u00a0and significant movement from preseason expectations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
NHL\u2019s unpredictability\u00a0can create discrepancies between the odds and a team\u2019s underlying\u00a0outlook. My goal is to find and extract value by\u00a0looking\u00a0where the market\u00a0may be over or undervaluing a team, based on roster changes, recent performance,\u00a0injuries,\u00a0or other factors\u00a0that\u00a0could shape the season ahead.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Here are four plays worth\u00a0considering:\u00a0<\/p>\n
Montr\u00e9al Canadiens (+2000) to win the Stanley Cup\u00a0<\/p>\n
The drive for Stanley Cup No. 25 is alive in Montr\u00e9al. Frankly, the odds here do not compute. Yes, the Atlantic Division is going to be a grind. Yes, the Canadiens won two massive Game 7s last year on the road before getting crushed by Carolina. But why do the Canadiens have by far the longest odds of the final four teams from last season?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0likely because the expectation\u00a0is that\u00a0the Florida Panthers will rebound and present\u00a0a totally different\u00a0playoff path. But what if Florida\u2019s goaltending\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0hold up?\u00a0This could be supported by comments from an anonymous NHL goaltending coach who\u00a0stated, \u201cMy hot take is Florida has the worst goaltending tandem in the league, and the Canadiens have the best in the division.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Beyond\u00a0that,\u00a0the\u00a0Habs\u00a0boast a 50-goal scorer in Cole Caufield, the reigning Selke Trophy winner in Nick Suzuki, a future Norris Trophy candidate in Lane Hutson, while Ivan Demidov and Juraj Slafkovsky have so much room for growth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
This incredibly young Montr\u00e9al team\u00a0returns much of the young core\u00a0that\u00a0reached the final four last season, with several key players still developing. At +2000, the\u00a0Canadiens have the\u00a0longest\u00a0Stanley Cup odds of any of last season\u2019s four conference finalists.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Florida Panthers Under 107.5 Points\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are skeptics about Florida\u2019s health and age, with an anonymous\u00a0NHL GM\u00a0saying: \u201cI know everyone is expecting Sasha Barkov to bounce back, but people forget sometimes it takes a full\u00a018 months\u00a0for a player coming off an ACL tear to return to form.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0usually not immediate.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alongside this,\u00a0Brad Marchand\u00a0also\u00a0surprised everyone when he shared in August that he recently underwent surgery for what sources believed was to repair a core muscle\u00a0injury,\u00a0we news claiming that\u00a0he may not be\u00a0available for the start of\u00a0the regular\u00a0season.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is zero\u00a0doubt\u00a0the Panthers should be significantly better\u00a0as their forward group is\u00a0stacked,\u00a0but\u00a0to hit\u00a0108 or more points requires a lot of things to go right and there are already some things working against them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
We need to remember that\u00a0two seasons\u00a0ago,\u00a0when the Panthers won their second straight Stanley Cup, they only finished with 98 points in the regular season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Los Angeles Kings Over 95.5 Points\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0anyone around hockey particularly bullish on the long-term outlook for the Los Angeles Kings, with concerns over how the roster has been constructed and whether it is sustainable moving forward.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t like their roster construction at all, this\u00a0feels like a roster Kenny (Holland) is holding together by duct tape,\u201d one rival NHL GM said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0a bet about the\u00a0future,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0about the present. And\u00a0I believe\u00a0the\u00a0Kings have enough to be a playoff team.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Last season marked the first time since 2001 that Peter Laviolette did not serve as an NHL head coach. Now he\u00a0has\u00a0the ability to make an immediate\u00a0impact\u00a0which could be one of the Kings\u2019 biggest strengths.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI will\u00a0say,\u00a0few coaches get more out of their team in the first year than \u2018Lavy\u2019 and\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0a big thing\u00a0the Kings have\u00a0going\u00a0for them,\u201d the GM said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Laviolette\u2019s first season with the Rangers, Artemi Panarin netted a career-best 49 goals and 120 points. The Kings are better supported down the middle this season with Erik Haula and Scott Laughton. Wiley veterans Mats Zuccarello and Corey Perry will still be productive.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Evidenced by Panarin\u2019s two-year deal, the Kings\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0built for a long\u00a0time,\u00a0they\u2019re\u00a0built for\u00a0a good time\u00a0\u2013 and\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0to be in the postseason again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Detroit Red Wings (+1900) to have the fewest points\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yes, in a league with the Vancouver Canucks, this might seem like a stretch. Detroit finished 34 points clear of the Canucks last year, but their final position\u00a0doesn\u2019t\u00a0tell the full story.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But this is a bet on the dysfunction in Detroit with a Red Wings team closing in on training camp without a general manager. \u201cIt\u2019s inexcusable how long this search has taken, truly baffling to me\u00a0that\u00a0a\u00a0billion-dollar\u00a0franchise would operate this way in 2026,\u201d an NHL GM said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the league held its Zoom call with GMs and head coaches last week, we were all jockeying to try and figure out who was representing Detroit.\u201d It was assistant GM Shawn Horcoff, alas.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But then the Red Wings announced Dylan Larkin would attend training camp, despite not rescinding his trade request, and would no longer be captain of the team.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy strip him of the \u2018C\u2019 and whose decision was that?\u201d one rival executive asked. \u201cI get he requested a\u00a0trade\u00a0but he has been a good citizen. They\u00a0could\u2019ve\u00a0played nice and created some appearance of stability before they traded him.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The concern is that these issues with the roster could be the main factor for a low scoring season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
By\u00a0our count, the Red Wings only have five\u00a0great players\u00a0on their roster. Larkin is one of them; Simon Edvinsson is\u00a0another\u00a0and he does not have a contract yet. If Larkin\u00a0departs\u00a0midseason, look out for a team\u00a0that\u00a0played at the Canucks\u2019 pace (.392) over the final 28 games of last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Few professional sports are as difficult to predict from one season to the next as the NHL. Each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":892694,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-892693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=892693"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/892693\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/892694"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=892693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=892693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=892693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}