NHL weekly betting guide: True moneylines for every game

What would you rather pay for a 2009 Toyota Tacoma – $11,000 or $12,500?

That’s an easy answer, but it’s not an either/or question. Both prices might apply depending on where and when you buy the lightly-used reliable sport pickup truck. It’s the same thing in betting the NHL.

Last Thursday night, you could have bought the winless Sharks for +200 on the moneyline at the Rangers. If you had waited, you could have bought them at a +250 payout before puck drop. Same purchase, different price.

San Jose won its first game of the campaign, and both bets cashed, which might not feel like a big deal. However, in moneyline-centric sports like the NHL, the win column is as impactful as losses are. Would you rather have laid -240 with the Rangers or -300? Losing “just” 2.4 units instead of three adds up during hockey’s high-volume betting season.

The hardest thing for novice bettors to understand is that no one can predict who’s going to win with any level of certainty, but what’s important in betting on hockey is getting the best price – not whether a bet wins or loses (like in point spread bets), but how much you win or lose when they do.

Using last week’s guide would have told you that the Sharks weren’t a good bet at +200, a wager unlikely to be profitable long-term. However, it also would have said San Jose was a good bet at anything better than +217. Both can be true.

Like the Sharks, the Coyotes, Canadiens, Sabres, and Flyers all had big upsets last week at prices that would have gotten the green light from our weekly pricing helper. In turn, the Oilers were a good bet at home against the Hurricanes, but only if you found an available -110 price. If learning about how price shopping works isn’t for you, then neither is money.

The recipe

We started the campaign by using regular-season point totals as a baseline for rating teams since it’s still the best measurement we have. Throughout the season, we’ll start adjusting club ratings using our on-ice metrics of choice to remove the cognitive bias of win-loss records, which can be skewed by various outliers like special teams results, poor goaltending performances, and other unreliable events like three-on-three overtime and the shootout.

The cheat sheet

The following includes my fair price on the games (true moneyline) and the moneyline price I’d need to bet either side. I only need a 1% edge for a favorite if we’re getting better than a fair price on the team more likely to win. For the underdog, I’ll need 4% or better to make it a bet. For games I project to be closer to a coin flip, a 2.5% edge is enough for a worthwhile wager. I also have a 5% win probability consideration for a team playing in the second game of a back-to-back with travel and a 3% consideration for a team on the second leg of a back-to-back without travel. When it comes to injured players, I will do my best to guess the impact on their team’s win probability.

When the betting markets open up the night before, you can compare those prices with our “Price to bet” column to see if you’re getting any value with either side’s moneyline. There’s also a possibility that a moneyline moves into a betable range at some point between market open and puck drop.

Matt Russell is a betting writer for theScore. If there’s a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. Find him on Twitter @mrussauthentic.