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Sean Allen, Special to ESPN.com
If recent history tells us anything, the Edmonton Oilers are about to catch some wind and sail out of the doldrums.
The Philadelphia Flyers play their third consecutive game in western Canada when they visit the Oilers at Rogers Place on Tuesday evening. They eked out a 3-2 shootout win to open the season on Friday in Vancouver and then dropped a 6-3 decision to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.
This western Canada road swing is a trip that comes up somewhat frequently for NHL teams, as the league looks for efficiencies in travel. In the previous three seasons, there have been 27 such road trips in which a team, in no particular order, will play the Vancouver Canucks, Flames and Oilers in consecutive road games.
This season, the trip amplifies in frequency, as the journey will be made 17 times by teams not including the Canucks, Flames and Oilers. Furthermore, 12 of the teams making the trip this season are, like the Flyers, coming over from the Eastern Conference.
As road trips go, it’s a particularly distant one that takes most teams out of their home country for a few days. Given how often this particular western Canada trip will come up this season, it’s worth going over some of the recent history to look for any trends.
In only the third game of the 27 three-game series’ in the past three seasons, the Canucks, Flames and Oilers have combined for a record of 15-12. The Canucks are 5-9, the Flames are 6-2 and the Oilers are 4-1 heading into Tuesday’s tilt. Tuesday’s game is made particularly interesting because, for the second consecutive season, the Oilers have started poorly. In fact, this season’s 0-3 outscored by a 15-3 start is even worse than last season’s 1-2 outscored by 13-10 after three games margin.
But in those five games in recent seasons in which the Oilers are the final leg of the trip, they have outscored opponents 26-11 and easily covered the spread in the four out of five games they won. Overall, Eastern Conference teams doing the trip are 7-8, but against the spread the result is 5-10. Overall, the Flames, Canucks and Oilers have combined to go 17-10 against the spread in these third games.
So, if there is one trend to watch here, it’s the Oilers taking care of business against the -1.5 spread, which, likely because of their poor performance so far, actually opened at a positive +110.
When it comes to the over/under on these road trips, ESPN’s historical data shows 13 unders, 12 overs and two pushes. For just the games with a 6.5 total, the over has hit four times and the under seven. Tuesday’s tilt opened at 6.5 with -105 on the over and -115 on the under. This decently reflects the recent history in these games, but it will be worth checking back closer to game time to see if the over starts getting tempting, given the Oilers’ history of experiencing 7.40 average goals in these third games (the overall average is 5.96).
The lines
Minnesota Wild at St. Louis Blues
7:30 p.m., Enterprise Center, Watch live on ESPN
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Blues (-1.5, +210), -115 money line.
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Wild (+1.5,-300), -105 money line.
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Total 5.5: (Over -125, Under +105)
The picks
This opened with the Wild as a road favorite on Monday, but, probably because of little info about the injury statuses of Joel Eriksson Ek and Jared Spurgeon, the odds have flipped, with the Blues as the favorite as of 9 a.m. on Tuesday. We could see more flip-flopping in this coin-toss game if news about Eriksson Ek or Spurgeon emerges.
If you are looking for props, Ryan Hartman for a point (over 0.5 points, +135) is promising, since he might be playing up in Eriksson Ek’s role on the second line and top power-play unit. Maybe combine that with Jake Neighbours (over 0.5 points, +115) for a +381 parlay, as Neighbours remains a top-liner with top power-play minutes, but he still doesn’t get the requisite love.
The lines
Philadelphia Flyers at Edmonton Oilers
10 p.m., Rogers Place, Watch live on ESPN
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Oilers (-1.5, +105), -240 money line.
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Flyers (+1.5, -125), +200 money line.
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Total 6.5: (Over -110, Under -110)
The picks
The under odds have moved from -115 to -110 overnight into Tuesday, and they are tempting given the Oilers’ struggles to score so far. But, as outlined above, there is reason to believe the Oilers can snap out of their current funk.
The Flyers will almost certainly go back to goalie Samuel Ersson, not only because he was solid and Ivan Fedotov struggled, but because the team is likely going close to 50-50 this season. Connor McDavid had five points the last time the Flyers visited, on Jan. 3 last season.
All things considered, the play might be to back the Oilers offense. A cheap way in would be Jeff Skinner (over 0.5 points, +115), who isn’t quite out of chances to find chemistry with McDavid on the top line. If you do like the Oilers side, a parlay option might be to back Skinner and fade Travis Konecny (under 0.5 points, +115) to combine for a +325 parlay.
Betting trends
The plan for this article, every other week, will be to have a look at some of the recent trends in the NHL when it comes to odds versus results.
It may go through a few iterations until we find what is the most useful information for me to share, but for now, I’ll explain a little bit of what kind of data we will have. To start, I’m capturing the spreads, over/under and money lines from ESPN BET four times per day to start building a database of odds. The idea is to compare how they stack up to the actual results as the season progresses and we can look to identify areas to tackle together.
As a bit of an introduction this week, let’s do a Sports Betting 101 with the basics on the spread:
The spread is when you are betting either that the favored team will outscore their opponents by the determined spread, or that the underdog team will either win or at least keep the game within a margin of defeat that is less than the spread. Typically, the spread will be set at 1.5. On rare occasion in a pregame scenario we might see a 2.5, but unless the game is underway, we should see a 1.5 spread the vast majority of the time.
For the favorite, or the team expected to win, the spread will get a minus sign in front of it, like -1.5, to indicate the number of points they must win by for a bet on them to be successful. Conversely, the underdog will have a plus sign, such as +1.5, indicating that they can either win the game outright or lose by fewer points than the spread.
Each of these spreads, for both the favorite or the underdog, will be accompanied by odds. In the spread scenario, the underdog has the advantage, and this is borne out in the odds and the results. Of the 42 games of collected data I have as of Monday evening, the favorites are 15-27 against the spread, while 20 of the games have had odds of +150 or greater for the favorite (generally speaking, the higher the odds, the less expected the result by the sportsbooks).
The underdogs, conversely, are 27-15 against the spread with all but two of the 42 games offering minus odds on the underdog spread; in fact, 17 of the games offered -200 or lower.
Using the odds data collected as of Tuesday morning, have a look at how the spread would have played out for someone placing a $1 wager on every game:
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Putting $1 on every favorite for the spread would have netted $26.17 on 17 wins and lost $28 for a net result of -$1.83.
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Putting $1 on every underdog for the spread would have netted $16.71 on 28 wins and lost $17 for a net result of -$0.29.
That’s not a great strategy, of course, which is why we’ll be looking for deeper trends as the season progresses.
As a starting point, consider the scenario of a favorite on the road.
When the favorite is at home this season, they have only covered the spread 11 out of 32 times (34%). But when the favorite is on the road, they’ve covered six out of 13 (46%). It’s not a huge improvement, but it’s something to note this early in the season.
Aside from the Blues, mentioned above, we have another road favorite, as the Vegas Golden Knights (-1.5 spread, +175) roll into face the Washington Capitals (+1.5 spread, -225). The Capitals will be without stalwart defender Matt Roy, who is expected to be out into next week. Just watch out for those intangibles, as Logan Thompson will make his debut in the Capitals’ crease against his former team. That’s the kind of personal storyline that can make the odds go out the window.