Betting preview: Five betting storylines to watch this NHL season

The puck dropped on the 2024-25 NHL season thousands of miles away on Friday, when the New Jersey Devils defeated the Buffalo Sabres 4-1 in Czechia, but back in North America, the focus is squarely on the best player in the world, wondering whether this season will finally be the one when he breaks through and wins the Stanley Cup.

After their run to the Stanley Cup Final last season, the Edmonton Oilers are the consensus betting favorites to win it all in 2025, showing anywhere between +700 and +850 odds across the sportsbook marketplace. Oilers phenom Connor McDavid shows odds around +150 to win the Hart Memorial Trophy, pacing the field by a wide margin.

Despite the short odds for the championship this season, the Oilers are seeing action across the board.

“I think people just feel that maybe the McDavid story can finally have that Stanley Cup ending,” BetMGM senior sports trader Matthew Rasp told ESPN. “The money’s been coming in on the Oilers ever since the season ended last year.”

There are 31 other teams out there vying for the Cup and anything can happen once the chaotic playoffs start in April, but history and conventional wisdom generally say that many of the usual suspects will be the competitors over the next few months, starting with the final two teams that competed for the trophy last season.

“I think the NHL sometimes gets the reputation that it’s got a lot of parity and that’s just kind of not true, at least in the last 10 years or so,” said Caesars Sportsbook head of hockey Karry Shreeve. “Twelve out of 16 teams that were in the last postseason get into the next postseason. Obviously, the trick is nailing those 12 teams, but we’re gonna see a lot of the same stuff.”

Oilers, Panthers lead the way again

Getting back to the Stanley Cup Final isn’t easy, but if there’s one team that knows something about it, it’s the reigning champions.

After sneaking into the playoffs as an 8-seed and fighting their way to a Final appearance in 2023, the Florida Panthers dominated the NHL last season, recording a straight-up favorite record of 46-18-2 (a profit of 5.23 units) and overperforming on their preseason points total by 11.5 points, according to ESPN Research. It ended with the Panthers hoisting the first Stanley Cup in franchise history.

Florida will seek to be the first repeat champion since their in-state rival, the Tampa Bay Lightning, did it in 2022. That year, the Bolts outperformed their preseason points total by just 1.5 points. For the 2024-25 campaign, the Panthers’ regular-season point total stands at 102.5 points and their odds to win the Cup are +1000.

The team getting the most attention from sportsbooks and bettors alike is the 2023-24 runner-up Oilers, who show a league-leading preseason point total of 108.5, as well as the leading odds to capture the President’s Trophy (+550) and, of course, the Stanley Cup.

“The Oilers are best for the customers right now if they do come through this season. They’ve been bet the most in terms of stake, not necessarily ticket count, but they have been the highest bet team,” Shreeve said. “The Panthers may have been the more complete team [in the 2024 Final], but the Oilers have the superstar and that really does play large for somebody that wants to place a bet over the summer as, ‘Let me just simply bet the best player.'”

BetMGM, DraftKings, ESPN BET and FanDuel all show Edmonton as their most-backed team to win the Cup by both bets and handle, taking around a quarter of the money market-wide.

Florida is seeing comparatively very little interest from bettors. ESPN BET says that, of the top six favorites, the Panthers have the lowest ticket and handle count, while BetMGM says that the team has just 4.2% of the bets and money, ninth in the league for both.

“A lot of times, just because they won last year doesn’t mean they’ll win the following year, but it has happened,” DraftKings sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN. “There are teams that go back-to-back, but it’s difficult to do.”

An open field

In all likelihood, there won’t be a repeat Stanley Cup Final matchup and there could be a new champion. A few are standing out among sportsbooks and bettors ahead of the new campaign.

The first is the New York Rangers, who are perennially one of the biggest wagers both for futures and game-to-game. They stand at +1400 to win the Cup at ESPN BET, and are a top-three pick by bets and handle at several sportsbooks, with BetMGM and Caesars reporting the Blueshirts as one of their biggest liabilities for futures.

“The Rangers are just staples for taking money every year in the future book,” said Avello. “We know that the Rangers are gonna be a liability every game.”

Another popular team this season is the Colorado Avalanche, who will look to return to the sport’s pinnacle after winning it all in 2022, showing +1100 odds to do so. BetMGM and DraftKings both report the Avs as a top-five selection for bettors, though other books say the action on them is a bit cooler.

The Nashville Predators, who made the high-profile acquisitions of Steven Stamkos, Jonathan Marchessault and Brady Skjei, among others, are +1600 to win the Stanley Cup (ninth on the odds board) and have been one of the most popular “dark horse” picks, according to ESPN BET.

BetMGM, Caesars and FanDuel all report significant action on the Preds, with Rasp saying, “they’ve naturally been a favorite for everybody” given the splashes they made. However, DraftKings hasn’t seen the same levels of fervor for Nashville, as they’ve gotten just 3% of the bets and 6% of the handle to win the Cup.

“The Predators are getting action because they, out of all teams, probably won the offseason,” Shreeve said. “But I don’t know if that always translates to next July when it matters most.”

Other teams receiving a fair amount of action include the Devils (+1000) and Toronto Maple Leafs (+1200), while previous darlings like the Dallas Stars (+1000) and Carolina Hurricanes (+1400) are not drawing as much bettor attention.

A new day in Utah

The 2024-25 season will also see an NHL team call Salt Lake City home for the first time, as the Utah Hockey Club will begin operations after moving from Arizona.

Relocation hasn’t been kind to modern teams, according to ESPN Research, as the previous two franchises to move, the 2011-12 Winnipeg Jets and 1997-98 Carolina Hurricanes, both missed the playoffs after beginning the campaigns with at least the sixth-longest championship odds in the league.

However, there is precedent for relocating teams performing well. The 1996-97 Phoenix Coyotes were +2500 to win the Stanley Cup and made the playoffs, while the 1993-94 Dallas Stars did even better, losing in the conference semifinals after beginning the season with +6000 odds to win it all, eighth-longest in the league.

Then there’s the 1995-96 Colorado Avalanche, who had built up momentum the season prior as the Quebec Nordiques and came into the campaign with the third-shortest odds to win the Cup at +800. They ultimately cashed those tickets, winning the championship that season.

While Utah won’t have nearly as high expectations going into this campaign, given their 100-1 title odds, bettors are backing the newly minted team in other ways.

BetMGM reports that Utah has taken 17.2% of handle to win the Western Conference, third-most of any team and their biggest liability in that market. DraftKings says that the Hockey Club is its most-bet team to make the playoffs, currently at +140 odds.

The books will also be aware of adjusting the team’s power ranking as the season goes on so that it doesn’t continue to get beat by bettors on a future and game-to-game basis.

“What I wanted to do this summer was to find who the next Vancouver was going to be. Vancouver last year took the league by storm at the beginning, and us as a book, we kind of got beat up for it, the customers were on top of that faster than we were,” said Shreeve. “Utah kind of fits that bill and they fit it because these last couple years, teams that finish the last 25% of their regular season significantly higher than their full regular season, then that has tended to drift into the next season.”

Awards season

Given the immense betting expectations and popularity for the Oilers, it should come as little surprise that Connor McDavid is dominating the odds and action to win the Hart Trophy as well.

The 27-year-old is the +140 favorite to take home his fourth MVP award and third in five seasons. Big money bettors don’t seem keen to bet against him doing so, as he has upwards of 60% of the handle at BetMGM, Draftkings and FanDuel.

Auston Matthews (+850) and reigning winner Nathan MacKinnon (+500) are attracting a respectable amount of smaller wagers market-wide, but sportsbooks aren’t anticipating the market to heat up until the season actually begins.

“The season needs to be going on and you need to have these moments with the players,” Rasp said, alluding to Matthews’ four-goal game and highlight reel goals from Jack Hughes (+1200) last season. “When stuff starts happening like that, that’s when we’ll start to take the money on those players.”

A much more interesting market this preseason has been for the Jack Adams Award, given to the coach of the year. The consensus leader across sportsbooks is Sheldon Keefe, who will be in his first season with the Devils and shows anywhere from +400 to +700 odds. While the former Maple Leafs boss is seeing some decent ticket write, the most intriguing action has been on the coach he faced in Czechia.

Lindy Ruff, the former longtime Sabres head coach who returns to the team this year, is seeing relatively long odds ranging anywhere from +1400 to +2500. Many bettors believe his return could spark the Sabres to break the longest playoff drought in NHL history, which would surely make him the Adams winner.

To that end, Ruff has taken an astounding 78.9% of the handle at BetMGM. Rasp says that the huge money number was the result of a few big wagers at the sportsbook and that he was “fine” with accepting them.

“It’s a team that is expected to be better than they were last year. People just look for that big price on a guy who has a better chance of winning the award than what maybe they’re being priced at,” he said. “I don’t see it happening, but I think it was a good educated wager to say the least. Like, it’s not impossible for that to happen.”

The Great 895?

There are fun specialty markets at sportsbooks this season, but perhaps none more enticing than for Alex Ovechkin to finally break Wayne Gretzky’s career goals record, which currently sits at 894.

Ovechkin needs just 42 more goals to stand alone as the NHL’s all-time leading scorer, but his ability to do so this season is dubious: The 39-year-old achieved this goal total as recently as 2022-23, but last season saw his production drop off significantly to “just” 31 goals.

The odds reflect his goalscoring ability dropping off with age, as he’s seeing a consensus +1000 to break the record this season. Still, many fans are taking a flier on him to achieve the feat, particularly in the Washington, D.C. area.

“We’re certainly getting action on it,” said Avello. “That’s the kind of bet that our users like to play. Something where you get some pretty good odds, something to root for the whole year.”