Stanley Cup Playoffs betting: Panthers-Maple Leafs series preview
Why the numbers don’t necessarily add up in this matchup
What’s it worth to you?
Money, time, energy, personal relationships - these are all things people value in different ways. A case-by-case study, if you will.
Betting is an exercise in valuations, and, as you likely know from reading/listening to THE WINDOW, we’re big on even-strength hockey here. After evaluation that, we make our best guess on what to expect from the goaltenders involved based on how they’ve been playing recently, since most goalies are largely interchangeable.
As the Panthers and Maple Leafs get set to do battle in Round 2 - only without the inter-province or inter-state title to go along with it - we’ve got new information to apply to a handicap of this series.
The “it” we need to assign worth to? First-round play metrics.
Given current pricing, a bet on Panthers-Maple Leafs may depend on how much you care about what happened in the first round.
First round autopsy
How each team made it through their first series (stats via naturalstattrick.com)
Lightning-Panthers:
The Panthers dispatched the arch-rival Lightning, in part because Tampa wasn’t able to create or convert the scoring chances they’d grown accustomed to, particularly down the stretch of the regular season.
Using the metrics from the 5-game series, Florida was 52% likely to win a random neutral site matchup, somewhere around, say, (hockey hotbed) Fort Myers. While that’s not a massive difference, any edge over a team that was a) rated equal to the Lightning, and b) rated 20% above league-average, is impressive, and Florida should get credit for getting to the dangerous places on the ice that Tampa couldn’t.
Senators-Maple Leafs:
The Maple Leafs took Game 1 with a combination of a low-danger chance goal and three power-play goals, then won the overtime games 2-1. That simple math adds up to a 4-2 series win, but if we do some slightly tougher arithmetic, the Senators were the better team at even-strength.
Based on the expected goal and high-danger chance numbers alone, we’d expect the Senators to win a hypothetical neutral Battle of Ontario game, somewhere between Belleville and Kingston, 55% of the time. That’s an especially grim diagnosis for Toronto, because, unlike Tampa Bay, Ottawa wasn’t rated among the Stanley Cup contenders coming into the postseason. Instead, the Leafs advanced without outplaying a team that was never rated better than league-average.
THE WINDOW’s Skaters Rating (Regular season)
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 Leafs’ 5-on-5 numbers in Round 1 were brutal even considering the low bar set by their mediocre regular-season stats. Luckily, Toronto’s ability to convert (16.1% SNIPES during the season, 18.6% vs. Ottawa) is predictable, since they have Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Mariano Rivera.
That’s the “Core Four” the lazy T-O media keeps talking about, isn’t it?
Florida’s skaters rating comes down because of their below-average conversion rates, but not having Matthew Tkachuk for two months seems relevant. Mix in 15 games missed from Aleksander Barkov, and whatever element has been added by Brad Marchand, and maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that an experienced playoff team who converted their best chances at a 13.5% rate during the season, upped it to 20.6% once the lights got brighter.
Goaltender Effects
While season-long stats are cool, every April we’re reminded that, when the puck drops on the Stanley Cup Playoffs, the calculus changes. So, we’ll take into account how the presumed starting goaltenders are playing so far this postseason, estimating how much win probability will shift based on postseason form. As we did heading into the playoffs, we adjust that estimated win probability 25% towards the mean for the win probability differential.
“The Maple Leafs have the goaltending advantage in this series”.
That’s a helluva sentence that the numbers are trying to sell us on, even at a 2% win probability estimation.
Anthony Stolarz was better than Sergei Bobrovsky since the 4 Nations Face-off break, and as we see above, the Leafs’ netminder was better in the first round, relative to an average goaltender.
How much are we buying that Florida’s Vezina-winning, star goaltender is going to be outplayed by his former backup?
We can cover that in the next section.
How to bet Panthers-Maple Leafs
On paper, the Maple Leafs have a 44.8% chance of winning this series, and a 4% edge target moneyline would be +145. With +150 available, the spreadsheet says the Leafs are worthy underdog bet.
However, since we know what goes into the ‘sheet - especially having seen Florida step up their play against Tampa in Round 1 - we can break down its legitimacy as well.
The skater valuations are based on a Panthers’ team that:
Might not have been super-locked in early in the regular season, having come off winning the Stanley Cup
Were without Matthew Tkachuk, Aaron Ekblad, and didn’t get deadline-acquisition Brad Marchand until late
Admitted they weren’t all that interested in winning the division, perhaps confident they could win on the road against the other Atlantic playoff teams (sure enough, they went 3-0 in Tampa Bay)
The goaltending valuation is telling us that Bobrovsky is less likely to be the better goaltender in this series, going against a netminder the Panthers’ practiced against last season.
Florida’s 10.5% difference in even-strength expected goal metrics is far more projectable than anything else that’s gone into the calculations.
If we started there, but then saw the two teams have at least equal SNIPES% conversion rates and goaltending performances, that feels not only unsurprising but probable.
Back to the math, if we even up the SNIPES% and take away the alleged goaltending advantage, the projected series price falls in line with what’s being offered in the betting market.
However, we’re looking to make a bet here, and I’m willing to wager that Bobrovsky outplays Stolarz and that the Panthers are able to best the Leafs in converting each team’s best scoring opportunities. With FanDuel offering Panthers -1.5 on the series spread at +122 (fair price +124), that’s where we’ll look.
Series bet: Panthers -1.5 games (+122, FanDuel)
Game moneyline target prices:
Game 1/2/5/7: Panthers (+105 or better)
Game 3/4/6: Panthers (-140 or better)
Most goals: Sam Bennett (+1400, DraftKings)
As the Panthers shift around their top-6 forwards with their various potential combinations, Sam Bennett followed arguably his best scoring season into three even-strength goals in Round 1. With the potential for Bennett to play with other noted playoff troublemakers like Tkachuk and Marchand, and his willingness to shoot (leading the Panthers in SOG versus the Lightning), Bennett’s capable of translating more opportunities into even more goals, especially if he gets a few more minutes on the power play.
In the first round, top snipers like Alexander Ovechkin, Brady Tkachuk, Kirill Kaprizov (and Matt Boldy), Nathan MacKinnon, Kyle Conner, Leon Draisaitl and Adrian Kempe, led their series in goals. What all those players have in common is a that they’re a singular star scorer expected to lead the way for their team.
This is a series with so many capable scorers on both sides that (like Lightning-Panthers) the series scoring leader might only need three or four goals, opening up the door for a second-tier option to finish with the most.
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