It’s time for way-too-early 2022 Stanley Cup odds!

You know who never sleeps? The people who set the odds for betting on sports.

As soon as a season ends, BAM — here are your odds for next season.

There’s no room for complacency in the sports betting world. You’re always look to the next season.

That’s the case for OddsChecker, which sent us its 2022 Stanley Cup champion odds yesterday.

Before we go any further, let’s acknowledge two things:

• It’s entirely too early for things like this, given that the offseason hasn’t really started and no one knows what teams will look like next fall.
• It’s the summer and we haven’t started our player reviews yet, so let’s talk about something else.

Now that we got that out of the way, you’ll be happy to know that the Bruins find themselves outside of the top-five on OddsChecker’s list.

The top six:

1. Colorado Avalanche - +650, implied chance of 13.3%
2. Tampa Bay Lightning - +750, 11.8%
3. Vegas Golden Knights - +750, 11.8%
4. Carolina Hurricanes - +1500, 6.3%
5. Toronto Maple Leafs - +1600, 5.9%
6. Boston Bruins - +2000, 4.8%

The New York Islanders are tied with the Bruins.

After that, you have four teams tied at +2500/3.8%: the Florida Panthers, the Minnesota Wild, the Pittsburgh Penguins, and the Washington Capitals.

Overall, these aren’t terrible. I’m a little surprised Tampa isn’t first, but at this point, the oddsmakers have to be assuming their luck will run out at some point.

Really, you can put the top three in a blender and still have OK results.

Carolina being up that high is interesting, though not entirely undeserved. What’s also interesting is the drop-off between the top-three teams and the fourth team. It appears to be a case of “Tampa, Colorado, Vegas, and everyone else.”

One more interesting note: the Seattle Kraken were given the third-worst odds, just behind the Detroit Red Wings and Buffalo Sabres.

Clearly Vegas isn’t expecting another Vegas in Seattle.