Stanley Cup Playoffs betting: Stars-Jets series preview
A complicated series may lead to a high-variance result
The two Game 7s in the Stanley Cup Playoffs this weekend were like nothing we’ve ever seen before.
Game 7 Nos. 199 and 200 in the history of the NHL both saw 2-goal, third period, comeback wins. In the previous 198 series finales, there had been three total.
I can’t imagine any of the previous trio being nearly as dramatic.
For more on the dramatic end of the Stanley Cup first round, check out THE WINDOW Podcast, “RANTANAN & RAVIN’” from Monday.
Coincidentally, to the victors don’t go the spoils but each other, as the Stars and Jets luckily don’t have to take on a team that’s been sitting back and resting. They’re equally drained.
While that should level the ice surface for Game 1, and the series as a whole, there are two giant wrenches that are ready to be thrown into the mix when it comes to assigning a value to both teams going forward:
A goaltender who has the biggest expectation variance we may have ever seen
The Stars are hoping to get a top scorer and their best defenseman back, while the status of the Jets’ top D-man and best forward is suddenly questionable
First round autopsy
How each team made it through their first series (stats via naturalstattrick.com)
Blues-Jets:
With home-ice advantage, the Jets should have won this series about 62% of the time, based on even-strength metrics alone. Given that the Blues had more than a 12-goal advantage in net, though, St. Louis was 60/40 to win any given game.
Of course, those numbers were swung heavily depending on which team was at home for the first six games. As in, it didn’t matter whether Hellebuyck was bad, or horrendous in St. Louis, since losing by one, two, or five goals is the same.
In Game 7, double overtime was appropriate, given it was a game that was a true coin-flip.
Avalanche-Stars:
Sometimes it comes down to “just stay alive long enough to have the stats regress to the mean.”
In this case, the Stars getting to Game 7 was already a win in a series where their high-danger conversion rate was scary low in the first four games, as it allowed Mikko Rantanen and other key forwards (Roopie Hintz, Wyatt Johnston) to eventually start scoring on their best chances. Meanwhile, Jake Oettinger needed all seven games to surpass Mackenzie Blackwood in the advanced metrics.
Once all that happened, Colorado being the better team at even strength mattered less, and depth of scoring options became the difference. Five Stars scored seven goals on the power play for the series, while only MacKinnon (3) was a legitimate danger for the Avs.
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)Handling point No. 2 from above first, the Jets were better than Dallas at even-strength during the regular season, and topped the Stars in SNIPES%.
For the first round, Winnipeg’s SNIPES% was 17.2% (16/93), right in line with their season-long numbers. Five-and-a-half of those games were with Mark Scheifele and six of them with Josh Morrissey. If those two are absent for any length of time, how does that change the calculus?
The Stars (12/83) survived the Avalanche, in theory, by creeping over the league-average with 14.4% SNIPES, thanks to a 4/22 close on converting high-danger chances. All of this came without offensive possession creator Miro Heiskanen, and leading goal-scorer Jason Robertson.
Mikko Rantanen’s vicious bar-down wrister, and power wraparound (that forced Blackwood to out of the net allowing for a bank-shot goal) weren’t considered high-danger chances. This goes to show that, while the Jets create and convert their HDC, a high-end scorer like Rantanen can turn non-HDCs into goals on talent alone.
On the surface, the Jets should be a small favorite, amplified by their home-ice advantage, but even if Scheifele and Morrissey didn’t quite make our 4% Club list, the latter could very well mean that much to the Jets, and any absence of both should at least hurt Winnipeg by at least 6%. Meanwhile, the possible return of Heiskanen (a 4-percenter) and Robertson, should give them a bump.
Naturally, there are numerous combinations of all four availabilities, creating a story behind virtually any odds for each game and the series.
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.
Hellebuyck can’t be as bad as his -1.51 GSAx/60 from Round 1, so in place of that number, we should really just squeeze this gif into that cell:
Connor Hellebuyck had not only the worst first round of any goaltender (-10.17 GSAx), there’s no way we’ve seen worse metrics for a goaltender who started all seven games and WON the series anyway. That would be wild enough if he were some random plug-in, but we’re also waiting for his pending Vezina Trophy announcement, and maybe even a league MVP award for his regular season as well.
So, when it comes to the pure math - how we apply what level of play we should expect for a goaltender in a coming series - what are we supposed to do with Hellebuyck?
It helps that we projected Jake Oettinger (0.408 GSAx since the 4 Nations Face-off break) for a 0.31 GSAx/60 and he finished pretty close to it at 0.62, but there’s any numbers of ways to treat Hellebuyck.
Here’s three:
A) Either he’s back to his regular-season self (buoyed by a strong finish to Game 7)
B) He’s still God-awful in the playoffs
C) To be safe, we assume he’ll just be average (essentially a bit of both good and bad)
Here’s how those three scenarios (when applied to the team’s skaters rating) calculate out to a fair price for this series:
Playoff Hellebuyck (-1.51 GSAx/60)
DAL 72.3% / WPG 27.7% or DAL -260 / WPG +260
Average Hellebuyck (0.0 GSAx/60)
DAL 52.8% / WPG 47.2% or DAL -112 / WPG +112
Regular season Hellebuyck (0.638 GSAx/60)
DAL 44.1% / WPG 55.9% or DAL +127 / WPG -127
This gives us a reasonable understanding of the various options for what “value” actually means in this series. However, like the skaters rating above, a wide range of options and results doesn’t help narrowing down a good bet.
How to bet Stars-Jets
By precedent (of how we’ve done things in the other three series previews), we’re using the first-round numbers for Hellebuyck, which happen to be the worst case for the Jets. Essentially, if he’s as bad as he was last series, yeah, the Stars should be 72% to win.
However, that seems unlikely. So, let’s work backwards.
Taking what’s being offered (+150/-160), the market’s giving Dallas a 60-61.5% chance to advance. Which, if all things are equal (Jets’ skaters have the edge at even strength, Oettinger plays right around his usual average), it seems like the bar for Hellebuyck is a projection of -0.55 GSAx/60 in this series. Which means a bet on or against the Jets is based on whether the presumed Vezina winner finds reasonable form.
Your guess is as good as mine.
All of this is for the purpose of understanding the market given this series’ various moving pieces, but it doesn’t necessarily translate into a firm bet. In part because we already have one - Stars Stanley Cup futures.
Initially bought and given out on the February 24th episode of THE WINDOW podcast, “Quick Education”, the Stars were available at better than +950 during the Avalanche series, for those late to the party.
We added to our overall Stars position with the series bet against Colorado because there was value on Dallas at plus-money. However, without knowing which players will be in or out of the lineup for Round 2, there isn’t a firm case that Dallas is valuable as significant favorite, without home-ice for a potential Game 7, against the President’s Trophy winners.
The one that we can estimate about this series is that, due to the variables, there’s a possibility of a polar, high-variance result. One such option? A short series.
If the Stars get their two stars back, while the Jets don’t and Hellebuyck stinks again, Dallas could win in five or less. However, if Heiskanen and Robertson STILL aren’t ready this week, while Scheifele and Morrissey are OK enough to play in Game 1 and Hellebuyck is back to his regular-season self, so could Winnipeg.
Under 5.5 games is available at +164 at FanDuel, and a short series is probably more likely than the 37.9% implied win probability of those odds.
Series bet: Under 5.5 games (+164, FanDuel)
Game moneyline target prices:
Game 1/2/5/7: Stars (+100 or better)
Game 3/4/6: Stars (-135 or better)
Most goals: Wyatt Johnston (+900, FanDuel)
Even if Robertson comes back, Johnston’s not going anywhere on the power play, as the right-handed shot who buried a team-high 11 goals on the man-advantage and was the trigger-man for the game-winner in Game 7.
For as much as Rantanen got the headlines for his epic hat-trick, he needed all three to surpass Johnston (3) and Hintz (4) for the team goal lead in against the Avs.
Against Winnipeg, the top line should get the attention of one of the best third lines in the league, but the combo of Johnston and Jamie Benn (and whomever they play with if Robertson’s back) should dominate their even-strength minutes.
Only Robertson had more shots on goal than Johnston during the regular season, so there’s room to improve on his 2.3 per game in Round 1. In just his third season, Johnston’s had at least three goals in every series played over the last two postseasons, and could be able to get to five with a little luck.
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