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If you look at this season’s NHL standings, it’s easy to forget that the New Jersey Devils finished second in the Metropolitan Division last year and knocked out the N.Y. Rangers in the Eastern Conference quarterfinals before falling to the Carolina Hurricanes. This time around, the Devils are in sixth place in the Metro, with a 31-30-4 record and 66 points. They are six points out of a wild-card position in the East with 19 games left on their regular-season slate. The team has been slumming all season, beset by goaltending problems from the outset. They are dead last in the league in save percentage overall and 30th in save percentage at five-on-five.
NHL Betting 2024 Regular Season Analysis: Most Disappointing Teams
Martin Brodeur, the president of hockey operations, did nothing at the trade deadline to salvage the situation, and things have worsened to the point that the Devils are dropping home games to the likes of Anaheim, San Jose, Arizona and Montreal. Their home record is 11-12-2, which suggests poor preparation. The team finally parted ways with coach Lindy Ruff, but making the assistant, Travis Green, the interim coach looks like throwing good money after bad. The first four games under Green showed no improvement in overall organization, defensive commitment or effort in goal. The Devils aren’t the only disappointing NHL team this season, though, so let’s look at some other examples as you start to think about NHL betting and the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Carolina Hurricanes
It’s true that the ‘Canes have righted the ship a bit, going 13-5-1 in their last 19 games. However, there are some trends that continue to worry Carolina fans as we near the postseason. This has been a consistent team since the arrival of Rod Brind’Amour as head coach for the 2018-19 season as the team is tied for third in points percentage for his first five seasons. That consistency dropped this season, and the goaltending was a major contributor. Frederik Andersen started the season inconsistently and then went on the shelf November 2 with a frightening diagnosis of blood clots. He finally returned a couple of weeks ago, and the team did get a boost. However, Antti Raanta is not a reliable backup; among goalies with 20 or more games this season, he has the worst five-on-five save percentage. The team added Jake Guentzel to put together two solid scoring lines, and the team didn’t manage a single goal in his debut. This is still a team looking to figure itself out, not the best place to be in the last fifth of the regular season.
NHL Carolina Hurricanes Betting Lines to Win
Los Angeles Kings
A lot of sports betting experts had the Kings running away in the Pacific, using a high-octane offense and a smothering defense to control the opposition, with elite goalie Cam Talbot as the backstop. The team started 16-4-3 but then stumbled for the next month, going 6-10-6 over that stretch. Since then, they’ve gone 11-6-2. Keys to their dropoff included a dreadful five-on-five save percentage during that part of the season (.902), as well as the worst five-on-five shooting percentage in the league (5.31%). The offense basically came from Kevin Fiala, Adrian Kempe, and Anze Kopitar. Pierre-Luc Dubois continues to struggle to provide consistent production on offense, with only 10 goals and 20 points in his first 45 games. Did things get better after that? No – his ice time is down about two minutes per game from what it was at the beginning of the season, and he is in just Year 1 of an eight-year, $68 million contract.
NHL Los Angeles Kings Betting Lines to Win
San Jose Sharks
We didn’t really expect the Sharks to contend, but they started 13-31-4 and have, unbelievably, gotten worse since then, going 3-10-3 over their last 16 games. They can still secure the worst record in the cap era, but they can only gain eight points over their last 18 games. They’ve had multiple losing streaks of at least 11 games, some of which speaks to bad luck, but the league-worst overall shooting percentage (6.83%) and the 13th-worst save percentage (.906) certainly didn’t help. The team is scoring 0.54 goals fewer at five-on-five, per 60 minutes, fewer than their expected five-on-give goal rate. Kevin Labanc, Mike Hoffman, and Anthony Duclair have all mailed in the season to this point, which has let opposing defenses collapse on Tomas Hertl, smothering his output.
NHL San Jose Sharks Betting Lines to Win
Anaheim Ducks
This is another team that did not arouse a lot of expectations at the start of the season. They started the season 16-30-1 and have slightly improved then (7-6-2), but an 0-3-0 performance over the last week suggests that the vultures may be circling. Their offense is young and speedy, but what that really means is that the defense gives up way too much and the team struggles with possession. Of the 26 Ducks with at least 50 minutes of ice time in all situations, 18 have performed below their individual expected goal total. Twenty of them feature a five-on-five shooting percentage below the league average of 8.68%. Alex Killorn, Troy Terry, and Trevor Zegras came in with the highest expectations in terms of offensive production, but they haven’t lit the lamp reliably, and the team’s record has suffered as a result. The margin of disappointment, of course, isn’t that great. After all, this isn’t a team that was going after a postseason spot, so performing worse than expected leads to a higher-than-expected pick in the next draft, allowing for the addition of another outstanding prospect to a club that is already filled with them.
NHL Anaheim Ducks Betting Lines to Win
Tampa Bay Lightning
Yes, the Lightning would enter the postseason if the regular season ended today, as they are ensconced in one of the East’s wild-card slots. However, they started 10-10-5, a stretch that included a four-game losing streak that saw them get outscored 19-5, including an 8-1 shellacking at the hands of a Dallas team that continues to treat consistent defense like an unpleasant green vegetable placed on the collective dinner plate. The Lightning have stayed in the league’s top ten in scoring for the season, but their defense has been porous all season along, with a goals-against average that has approached 4.00 at times. Their play in their own end has been careless at times, and Andrei Vasilevskiy, who didn’t return to the ice until November 24, started his season with a 1-3-0 record, an .859 save percentage and a 3.87 GAA. Those numbers have improved to 22-16-1, .896, and 2.96, but none of those approach the elite performance that Vasilevskiy has established as a standard for himself in this league. If we look at Vasilevskiy’s last two games – a 6-3 home loss to Calgary in which he stopped only 18 of 23 shots (.783 percentage) and a 7-0 blanking of Philadelphia in which he stopped 25 shots – we get a microcosm of his inconsistent season. He led the team to a dramatic home shootout win on March 2, stopping 28 of 31 shots in an eventual 4-3 shootout win. The fact that this came against lowly Montreal, though, shows us just how little consistency to expect. The team also has Jonas Johansson, but he can’t handle the workload of a frontline goalie, so Vasilevskiy needs to figure things out down the stretch.
NHL Tampa Bay Lightning Betting Lines to Win
St. Louis Blues
The Blues started out 12-10-1 and have gone 21-19-2 since, as their lack of consistency stays with them. They’re right on the edge of the wild card race, but their 7-8-1 February, which featured three losses in the last four games (and just three goals in those games), suggests that they may be falling out of the postseason. They only have one winning streak that went longer than two games. Their forwards and blueliners make a couple of impressive groups, but their goals scored per game (2.91) does not match the roster potential. Only first-line center Robert Thomas was putting up a point per season for most of the game.
NHL St. Louis Blues Betting Lines to Win
Odds to Win Stanley Cup for Top 10 Teams
- Florida Panthers +660
- Edmonton Oilers +700
- Colorado Avalanche +810
- Carolina HUrricanes +840
- New York Rangers +970
- Dallas Stars +1025
- Boston Bruins +1050
- Vancouver Canucks +1125
- Vegas Golden Knights +1125
- Winnipeg Jets +1400
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