Oddsmakers didn’t believe in the Bruins

Every once in a while, the friendly folks at Bovada send me emails with the odds of each team winning the cup, winning the division, etc. Recently, they did a little look back at their pre-season point predictions. The Bruins were underestimated...a little bit. Bovada was taking bets at over/under 92.5. As of today, they’re 17.5 points ahead of that guess, with the possibility of getting up to 6 more points. It’s pretty wild. What’s even crazier is that’s not even the team they got the most wrong, by a long shot. They weren’t even top 5. Vegas not Clarkson Golden Knights, obviously, did much better than expected. Second place? The Montreal Canadiens. Bovada predicted that they’d have 99.5 points by the end of the season. With 2 games to go, they’re 30.5 points short of that prediction.

For more fun, look at how far they’ve come in terms of chances of winning it all. Here’s a graph showing them vs. the other 2 top-3 FlorthEast teams, Tampa Bay Lightning and Toronto Maple Leafs. The number is rank, lowest being best and highest being worst, in terms of odds to win it all:

The Leafs were much more hyped at the beginning of the year, but the Bruins have come storming back. It should be noted that oddsmakers set odds based on how they can have equal numbers of bets on each side of the line, so this can be affected by, say, Leafs fans realizing that their team might be actually good this year. Tampa was just a good bed. And bless you if you bet on the Bruins in the beginning of November.

Anyways, the Bruins have been good, and they lost their last game, but they’re still in the driver’s seat for the division. Here’s my favorite table for that:

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