NHL Central Division Season Odds Preview – 01/06/21
by OddsShark (@OddsShark) – Sponsored Post
The Tampa Bay Lightning won their second Stanley Cup last season over the Dallas Stars as odds-on favorites, taking the NHL’s championship series in six games. But a rematch in the Stanley Cup Final will not be possible in 2021 because the Lightning will be competing directly against the Stars in the same division, with the defending champions listed as the +150 favorites to earn the Central crown at sportsbooks monitored by OddsShark.com.
Dallas is the co-second choice to win the Central at +400 along with the Carolina Hurricanes, who also did not compete in the same division as Tampa Bay in 2020. The Hurricanes finished fourth in the Eastern Conference’s Metropolitan Division a year ago while the Stars ended up third in the Western Conference’s Central before making their run to the Stanley Cup Final. The Lightning were second in the Atlantic of the East after winning it the previous two seasons.
The Nashville Predators (+650) and Chicago Blackhawks (+1400) are two other Western Conference teams joining the aforementioned hockey clubs in the Central this year. The Columbus Blue Jackets (+800), Florida Panthers (+900) and Detroit Red Wings (+4000) round out the group, the latter two also competing against Tampa Bay in the Atlantic last season.
One of the NHL’s best old-school rivalries will be reborn between the Blackhawks and Red Wings, who both used to reside in the old Central until the 2013-14 campaign when Detroit moved to the East and Chicago stayed in the West. Unfortunately, neither of those Original Six teams is expected to be very competitive in 2021, with each of them going through rebuilds.
The Blue Jackets and Panthers might be the best value plays at betting sites in the Central this year if they can continue to progress as young up-and-coming teams. Florida paid former Columbus goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky a lot of money as a free agent last offseason, and he underperformed there based on his huge contract. Former Chicago head coach Joel Quenneville will be in his second season at the helm for the Panthers and also have an opportunity to build a rivalry with the Blackhawks if only for one year with the realignment.
The 32-year-old Bobrovsky is expected to bounce back too and should be one of the best goalies in the division this season behind fellow Russian Andrei Vasilevskiy, who was a finalist for the Vezina Trophy with the Lightning in 2020. The Panthers did lose leading goal-scorer Mike Hoffman (29 goals) to the St. Louis Blues while the Blue Jackets have replaced Bobrovsky with a pair of promising 26-year-old netminders in Elvis Merzlikins and Joonas Korpisalo.
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