Cheat Sheet: November 30th, 2010

If you’re looking over the NHL betting board and want an unbiased second opinion, then scroll on down to the Cheat Sheet. A very busy computer crunched a bunch of numbers from this season and the last to produce an analytical summary of the day’s available bets. Do the numbers match with your opinions, or do they throw your predictions for a loop?

Scroll down to find out.

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Tuesday’s Cheat Sheet: (goalies as of 1:30AM ET)

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An opinion or two:

– I know that Toronto is highlighted in green today, but there is a slight problem here when it comes to ‘stat balance’. Quite simply, there aren’t enough stats from both teams for this game to really build a reliable prediction. That’s not to say though, that there isn’t a legitimate case to be made here for the Leafs, and really, I think that there is a legitimate case that can be made for taking the Lightning as well. The Tampa Bay argument is obvious–they’ve got a ton of firepower up front, and Toronto doesn’t. However, the Lightning do average just 2.64 goals per game on the road this season, which is less than Toronto’s 2.67 at home, and the differences in these two team’s home/away defenses is enormous. Tampa Bay has a 3.50 GAA on the road this season with a .881 save%, while Toronto has a home GAA of 2.17 and a save% of .918. There should be a lot of public money coming in on Tampa Bay, so if you’re considering taking Toronto then you might as well wait and see how the line moves. My gut reaction is to not bet this game though. Tampa Bay would kill Toronto on the PP, but Toronto is also a fairly discipline team–too many variables.

– The question in the ATL/COL game will be whether or not “Hot-lanta” can bring their success from home onto the road. This team is actually very hot at the moment, riding a 5-game win streak, while allowing just 3 goals total during that stretch. The computer has this game 51% – 49% in favor of Colorado, and I’m just about as divided on it as those numbers are. Colorado is 5-2 as a home favorite this season, but both of those home losses so far have also come as them being short favorites (-135 or less). I think that the better bet here is on Atlanta as a live dog. At the very least, I’d be shocked if they layed an egg in this one, with the kind of positive energy that they’re playing with at the moment. I would really like to wait and see if this line happens move in my favor though.

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