SCP Western Conference Final preview: Oilers and Stars
Which team has more to give in a championship rematch?
With all due respect to what’s going on over in the Eastern Conference, the winner of Oilers-Stars in the Western Conference Final will be the team that wins the Stanley Cup.
Ok, is that a bit dramatic - the type of eye-catching sentence that might be followed by a paywall break in the future? Well, yes.
Obviously, it’s hockey, and the teams from the East are no slouch, so they’ll have a respectable chance to hoist the sport’s Holy Grail, but what our introductory sentence is trying to punch home is that the Oilers and Stars weren’t just rated among the few true contenders throughout the regular season, they’ve also reached the high-side of their range this postseason with impressive series wins against teams who were just as likely to make a run to the Stanley Cup Final - something not as easily proven with conviction about either of the Eastern finalists.
As we’re reminded come each sport’s playoff, when it comes to futures, sports betting becomes linear. Just like the NCAA Tournament, we come into pro hockey’s final four with a live ticket on either side of the bracket. Here in the West, we’re holding Stars futures at +950 (a bet that got better with a post-4 Nations Face-off surge, but then worse with a late-season swoon and loss in Game 1 to Colorado that push Dallas to 20-1 in the market).
As we look at this series in a vacuum, the question is whether or not the Stars are a valuable bet on their own in this series.
Ironically, we first bought the Stars during the peak of college basketball season. Here’s the clip from the February 24th episode of THE WINDOW podcast, “Quick Education”:
Road to the Conference Final
The Oilers stormed back from down 0-2 against Los Angeles, winning four straight. Edmonton might have won four more in a row (by my math, that’s eight straight), but Vegas scored with 0.4 seconds left in Game 3. Undaunted, the Oilers simply stopped allowing goals altogether, as Stuart Skinner improbably posted two straight shutouts to close out the series.
The Kings and Golden Knights boasted strong depth and even-strength metrics in the regular season, making them a darkhorse - teams the market was hesitant to value at the tippy-top of the NHL. Meanwhile, the Stars’ first two opponents were as tough as you can sign up for.
The Stars first faced the Avalanche - a team that some oddsmakers were happy to install atop the oddsboard at any given moment. If Colorado’s award-winning duo of Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar weren’t enough, the Avs even got an emotional boost midway through the series with the triumphant return of captain Gabriel Landeskog. Up next? The President’s Trophy-winning Jets, who were back at full strength early on, had their Vezina-winning goaltender find his form (4.71 GSAx in Round 2), and even may have had some help from above after the untimely passing of their captain’s father.
While Stars’ futures investors have been anxiously awaiting celebratory cheers of “Dal-las!… Stars!”, given the storylines on the other side, we’ve likely been the only ones.
When they were valuable (and how they did)
We didn’t consider the Oilers a valuable bet in the first round. Their goaltending situation was unsettled and their depth was in question. In fact, we made four bets on the Kings game-by-game, going 2-2. The two bets won were when Skinner started and played poorly, and before the Oilers got an influx of goals from players not named McDavid or Draisaitl.
While that first-round comeback was impressive, it wasn’t enough for the betting market to truly believe the Oilers had reached their high point of the season. Lined slightly better than pick’em for the series (our projection was -120), Edmonton was a +120 underdog in Game 1 and 2, valuable compared to our buy point of +117. A pair of bets there would have netted +2.4 units.
Things got complicated when Skinner was forced back into action for Game 3. The Oilers closed around -115 in both games at home, a good deal compared to our target price of -125, but it required backing Skinner. Blindly taking Edmonton in those two games would have resulted in a small loss (1-1, -0.15 units).
For Game 5, the market adjusted to a strong Oilers’ effort in Game 4, opening Edmonton at +112 and never getting longer than +120, so when Kaspari Kapanen scored in overtime, he cashed our series tickets, but we missed the boat on a game bet win. At 8-3 for the playoffs, the Oilers are +5.1 units on game-to-game betting.
For Dallas, without Jason Robertson and Miro Heiskanen, the betting market was selling the Stars early in the playoffs, as the Stars closed around +150 for the series. That market reaction never fully corrected, making the Stars underdogs in all seven games (a unique bit of trivia should they win the whole thing), making them valuable in each game. Those willing to blindly back the Stars each game would have netted around 2.5 units on top of a 1.5 units for the series as a whole.
In the second round, the Stars were given far more credit, even though they didn’t get Heiskanen back until Game 4. At -160 for the series (our fair price was -150), there wasn’t any reason to press a position on Dallas.
In Game 2 and 5 - with Winnipeg playing a home game while trailing in the series, the art of betting met the science (or math) that guides our valuations. The market backed their desperation, pushing Dallas to a valuable bet by the numbers, but one that logically didn’t make as much sense given our respect for the Jets.
The one time the Stars were valuable in a neutral (or trailing) series state, was in Game 3, when Dallas was -130 in a scenario where our target price was -135. Strict discipline netted Stars bettors a unit, whereas letting it fly on the series and game-to-game ended up with a 3-unit win, proving that sometimes blind faith can pay off.
Essentially, both teams have surpassed the betting market’s valuation on the way to the Western Conference Final.
THE WINDOW’s Skaters Rating
Regular season
Playoffs
ES HDC%: Even-strength high-danger chance share
ES XG%: Even strength expected goal share
SNIPES%: (ES HD Goals + Power-play goals) / (ES HDG + ES PP Opp)
RATING: Above (+) or Below (-) league average
NEUTRAL WIN%: Probability of winning on neutral ice
IWP: Implied win probability (from a moneyline)The shift from regular season stats to playoff stats is somewhat jarring.
On the one hand, that’s a pretty big dip in the Stars’ even-strength metrics. On the other, that dip can be partially attributed to playing really good teams in the first two rounds, while also doing so without their leading goal-scorer (Jason Robertson) in Round 1, and one of the game’s best defensemen for the first 10 games (and Miro Heiskanen’s limited TOI for a couple more). It’s incredible that the Stars have overcome a SNIPES% that would be the worst of any of the 16 playoff teams.
Just six Stars have scored more than once this postseason, and Dallas has made the conference finals without a goal from Robertson, Heiskanen, and Matt Duchene (30 regular-season goals) - a fact that would have had you squinting at the stat sheet had I told you that a few months ago. Meanwhile, 11 Oilers already have more than one goal in the 2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
Speaking strictly about the skaters (as is the role of this section), Dallas is improved from last year’s team that lost the conference final in six games because the Stars scored just four times in the final three games. For example, Dallas only played four defensemen more than six minutes in Game 6 last year. This year, Thomas Harley’s done the heavy-lifting as a new-found No. 1 defenseman, and they’re deep enough to play seven D-men close to 10 minutes in Saturday’s Game 6.
Goaltender Effects
We looked at goaltender stats from down the stretch of the regular season for the first round matchups, and then a bunch of the netminders performed in direct opposition to their numbers. While two rounds of hockey isn’t a robust sample size, at least we’ve received information on how the four remaining starting goalies have handled the pressure of the postseason and how much that will shift win probability. As we did heading into the playoffs, we adjust that estimated win probability 25% towards the mean for the win probability differential.
If I could make one request of Jake Oettinger, it would be that we could put him down for a half-goal saved above expected in every game. While the occasional epic save* is awesome, I’ll take his consistently reliable difference-making.
*Like this one:
Stuart Skinner is the opposite of reliable.
Here are his five games and his GSAx this postseason:
Game 1 vs. Kings: -2.02
Game 2 vs. Kings: -0.8
Game 3 vs. Golden Knights: -1.07
Game 4 vs. Golden Knights: +2.01
Game 5 vs. Golden Knights: +1.98
Skinner’s basically the goaltending version of this guy:
So, while the wild swings in Skinner’s results almost perfectly projects to him averaging out to a replacement-level goaltender (0.02 GSAx/60), we’re likely to see him swing win probability in each game to one pole or another.
In last year’s Western Conference Final, Skinner boasted a 5.68 GSAx.
Let’s spoil the next section a little and bet that he doesn’t post that number again.
How to bet Oilers-Stars
Once all things “regular season” had been decided seeding-wise, the Stars and Oilers were both rated 20% above league-average by the betting market. That’s the level of a Conference finalist, so there’s no reason to be surprised that they’ve made it this far.
What is notable, is that the Oilers have reached their highest level of play (finally approaching a preseason rating of 25% above-average), thanks to the arrival of depth-scoring and Stuart Skinner’s wild ride. Simply put, getting 11 goals from Evander Kane, Adam Henrique, and Connor Brown, with two shutouts from Skinner, means things likely can’t get any better for Edmonton.
If you exclusively used playoff numbers, Edmonton becomes a fair price favorite of -123/+123 in this series. However, that would be an overreaction to 11 and 13 games, respectively.
For Dallas, if you have eyeballs, you likely saw a different, midseason-form version of Heiskanen in his third postseason game during Game 6 (going from almost 15 minutes played to 18:33 to 23:40). Game-changing defenseman don’t grow on trees, so the Stars’ dip in their metrics this postseason without Heiskanen needs to be taken with more than a few grains of salt.
Given that Heiskanen and Rantanen hadn’t played on the Stars together until last week, and the possibility that Robertson and Duchene (who scored 65 goals on 17.9% shooting during the regular season but have 0 goals on 25 shots this postseason) actually score, Dallas may have some room for improvement.
Whether you rate the Oilers and Stars at 20% or 25% above league-average, making them equals gives Dallas a 2.5% edge because of their home-ice advantage, and that’s enough to make them worth a bet at even-money.
Series bet: Stars to win (+100, Bet365)
Game moneyline target prices:
Game 1/2/5/7: Stars (-120 or better)
Game 3/4/6: Stars (+135 or better)
Most points: Mikko Rantanen (+500, FanDuel)
Rantanen’s back-to-back hat-tricks is the first line of his resume this postseason, but he’s actually had more assists than goals (9 to 10) en route to leading the playoffs in scoring.
While he’s played in two more games than Connor McDavid (17 points) and Leon Draisaitl (16 points), Rantanen gets to drive the net on an inferior goaltender in this series. Racking up 19 points against Mackenzie Blackwood (9th in regular season GSAx) and Connor Hellebuyck (1st) is more impressive than the Oilers’ stars beating Darcy Kuemper and Adin Hill.
The Stars’ power-play should be even better with Miro Heiskanen back at the helm of the top unit, while the Dallas penalty kill has been excellent (86%) against two of the best power-plays in the league - the Avalanche (8th in the regular season) and the Jets (1st).
Rantanen should continue to be involved in a high percentage of the Stars’ scoring - via generating shots on goal (5th this postseason) and as a playmaker (5th in assists), continuing his run as a Conn Smythe contender.
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