Week 1 NHL Betting Preview

A summary of what worked and failed in week one of the last 4 seasons.

This season my blog will be featuring a weekly NHL Betting Preview, outlining which bets were most successful this week in the 4 previous seasons. I have been recording all the betting lines for every game dating back to October 2019, and have a ton of data worth sharing. What wagers would have won you the most money in the last 4 week ones combined? It needs to be noted that I didn’t start recording over/under lines until 2021/22, so that data is not a complete set. Similarly, I did not record alt-pucklines (dogs -1.5, faves +1.5) until 2022/23, but that gave me enough data to estimate what they would have been based on the pucklines I did record with 98% correlation.

Another thing I’ll be adding this season is a portfolio in my betting spreadsheet called “Tailing History”, which will use these betting previews to make all its picks. What would happen if you made a bet on every single game based on what was a better choice historically? The bet size will be adjusted based on how profitable it was in previous seasons and the performance of that portfolio will be regularly discussed in my weekly Betting Reports. Is tailing history a good strategy? We’re about to find out! When the portfolio has a really good or bad week, I’ll be able to explain exactly why that happened.

The data feeding Tailing History’s decision-making algorithm is a historical database of previous weeks from the last 4 seasons. My summary worksheet which generates the stat images you’ll see in my weekly reports/previews can do so using data from the current season, or any historical sample of games. My First Quarter Preview used all the Q1 games from the last 4 years. This one is using all the week one games from the period. This project required a substantial time investment during the offseason, but fortunately my obsession with providing you quality information fueled my undertaking.

Before we go any further, it’s time for my obligatory *DISCLAIMER* it needs be noted that I’m not betting with real money. These are all fictional wagers in a spreadsheet. My mission is to engage in a mass betting campaign, picking a winner of every single game, every over/under, because it provides a complete dataset for macroeconomic analysis, which can be shared with you, shedding light on what worked and what failed. I’m also tracking the results of betting every outcome, to help me (and you) uncover previously unknown or newly emerging profit vectors. What started as a thought experiment has evolved into much more.

If you’d like to read more about the first 3 years of this thought experiment, I actually wrote a 330-page book outlining the results from every angle. It’s ostensibly a journal of my experience; breaking it down by team, by category, by strategy, by season. There is plenty of useful information for bettors of all skill levels. It covers pre-pandemic, peak-pandemic, post-pandemic. What worked, what failed. Lessons learned, market trends, team-by-team analysis. What impact did the pandemic have on hockey betting? The market differences between these 3 seasons are discussed at length, and there's a lot to talk about. To read more, visit the Amazon store.

My blog has been moved to Substack this season and I’ll be repeatedly encouraging everyone to sign-up for a free subscription to alleviate my dependence on Twitter for traffic. I’m concerned that Elon will follow through on his threat to charge everyone for Twitter and ostensibly destroy his own company. I wouldn’t put anything past him at this point, and I’ve got too many eggs in that basket. Subscribers receive an email notification each time a new post is published, and even if Twitter stays free, the algorithm likes to hide Tweets with links so you don’t leave.

This is actually the most writing you’re likely to find in one of these previews given that I had plenty of time to prepare. Once the season actually starts, this will be sandwiched between my weekly Fantasy Report and Betting Report, so I’ll have time limitations. Draft Kings has lines up for 32 of the 34 week one games, and I’ve recorded them all, also doing a comparison of how some of the lines compare to previous week ones. Because there are some notable differences we’ll get to later. Most Sundays when these are posted, I’m not going to have 6 days worth of upcoming betting lines to discuss.

Looking at my historical week one data, the big winner was home teams, which doesn’t surprise me because I was pumping those last season as a strong investment early in the schedule (having checked what worked the years before). Both home favorites and dogs ran a positive balance, but the bigger winner was home favorites, especially -1.5 goals. Better teams at home are more likely to run up the score in week 1, but there’s more on that below.  This very much consumed the attention of Tailing History, who made a lopsided investment in home teams (including home dogs +1.5 goals).

A commonality between the week one and first quarter previews is the success of home favorites moneyline, while week one is headlined by home favorites -1.5 goals. My tailing history portfolio has made its picks for the opening week, and it’s highly leveraged on pucklines specifically. There’s a few that make me nervous (like L.A -1.5 goals against Colorado) but there’s a reason that I’m not using real money, this is a thought experiment that is entirely governed by historical precedence, following in the footsteps of what worked week one in the last 4 seasons.

My tailing history portfolio has varying bet sizes proportional to how profitable that line range was in those combined weeks, with a minimum of $100 and a maximum of $500. In order to be a max bet, the category needs to be in the top 10% of all weekly performances, using my weekly database containing 104 weeks (sorry that counts each round of the playoffs as a week). The portfolio has several max bets on home favorite pucklines in the first few nights. The $2,973 that category generated in the last 4 week ones is the most of any category in any week.

If you follow this all season, you won’t see a number that big again. Most of that damage was done in the -110 to -150 ML range, so it’s not even the heaviest favorites driving that bus. Yeah, Tailing History saw L.A -110 at home against Colorado and said max bet on the Kings puckline at +205. My wager was a minimum bet on the Colorado moneyline, so I diverged from historical precedence, but did agree with the max puckline bets on Boston and Pittsburgh to beat Chicago, as well as Toronto to beat Montreal. If 2 or more of those don’t cover, I’ll have a very bad week.

Home favorites have been a big wager for me early in previous seasons, which is not a coincidence. I was looking at historical precedence last season and followed my own advice. My “big short” of the 2021/22 Arizona Coyotes from the opening of that season was one of my most profitable ventures in the last 4 years, which will leave its fingerprints on my own category betting results that you’ll see in these weekly previews. But eventually the sportsbooks neutered the Coyote betting lines, and that golden goose stopped laying eggs by the 3rd quarter.

My Tailing History portfolio has logged its wagers for the first 32 of 34 week one games, and 68% of its total investment is leveraged on home teams -1.5 (mostly favorites but a couple are -110). Evidence suggests that sportsbooks are also aware of historical week one precedence, because the average home favorite moneyline in the previous 4 opening weeks was -125 and in the first 32 games it is -139. Charging a higher price for those home favorites lowers the expected return even if they win the same proportion of games. Similarly, the average home fave puckline -1.5 goals has gone from +155 historically to +127 in the first 32 week one games posted on Draft Kings.

The portfolio is also making an over/under bet on each game, but I’m skeptical that will run a profit. Having logged my first 18 over/under wagers, I only agreed with historical precedence in 27% of games. The data its using is under different circumstances because the previous 2 seasons (I only started recording over/under lines 2 seasons ago) the average O/U total was 6. This year it is 6.4, an increase of nearly 7%. Previous years, 28% of the totals were 5.5 goals. This year there are zero. My portfolio’s picks were generated using precedence with a different price-point.

So far my own over/under bets are running roughly 60% under. I’m looking at team average goals per game in the 2nd half of last season, and they’re nearly all leaning under, likely a reflection of the higher prices being charged by the books. Maybe those higher totals are a function of the public betting overwhelmingly over in the past, and the tax on overs is the result of public habits more than historical precedence. My Tailing History portfolio is picking over in 22 of the first 32 games, so it’s at risk of getting hammered if there’s a tax on overs to neuter the public habits.

You may recognize some of the stat graphics below from my weekly reports last season (and my Q1 preview yesterday), along with a few new ones. I’ll be keeping a much closer eye on “line range” performance this season, like say home moneyline >= +170, and will also have all the historical line range performances just a few clicks away. The historical database has far more data than what I’m presenting here, so I’ll have plenty of evidence when dissecting the success or failures of Tailing History. I can also quickly check these detailed stats for any given sample of games.

If any of you have a winning angle/strategy (or just ideas) that you’d like me to flush through my database for a profitability analysis, just ask. The summary data below is for the 137 week one games in the previous 4 seasons. Good luck!

Note: Tailing History only has two road moneyline wagers, both vs home teams who played the night before. Otherwise, it wants no part of VML.

Note to self: The Detroit Red Wings are 6-2 in the last 4 week ones, which includes their historically terrible 2019/20 campaign when they started 2-0.

My tailing history portfolio is using the above table week-to-week for its decisions, and these will be posted every Sunday. It looks up the line for each side, betting the one that made more money (or lost less). If the profit was less than $100, then it’s a minimum bet of $100. If it is $500 or higher, then it will be a max bet of $500. If the profit was $250, then the bet is $250. For over/under, all bet sizes are the same $100. If the total is 6.5, it bets the side that was more profitable (or lost the least) for that exact total in previous seasons. Most of the lines listed in week 1 are at 6.5, and overs went 14-7 with that total in previous seasons. So, the portfolio bet over in all of those (which may be flawed if the price scale has changed). That’s where we were most in disagreement, over 6.5, with me leaning more under.