The Cheat Sheet: December 3rd, 2010–System Updated*

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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SYSTEM UPDATE:

The “What Have You Done For Me Lately” Patch —  As I was watching Tampa Bay give up goal after goal to Boston yesterday with no end in sight, I couldn’t help but think to myself “shouldn’t I have seen this coming?” In their previous 4 road games, the Lightning had given up a total of 17 goals. Their road GAA for the season was already 3.47, and their road save percentage was somewhere near .880, but even these numbers weren’t enough to deter the computer from picking them to win.

Hence, I decided that a little tune-up was in order. What I ended up changing then, was the way that each team’s expected shot% and save% would be calculated. Instead of simply using the overall season percentages, the system will now weight the shot% and save% from the more recent games a lot heavier than it will weight the percentages from the less recent games. This will also help take into account hot goalies as well as teams that have gone cold on offense.

As a result, what teams have done during the course of the entire season now won’t factor into our predictions as much as what teams have done lately.

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Friday’s Cheat Sheet: (goalies as of 2:00 AM ET)

An opinion or two:

– Oh man, I can’t believe that Anaheim has been selected as the play of the day. Well, I can’t say that I’ve never been in this spot before–the computer has picked a play that I personally would have picked the other way. At the very least though, it should be noted that the home team in this series has won the last 9 head-to-head meetings. To add to this, the home/away split stats from these two teams do favor Anaheim slightly, and even after the new ‘W-H-Y-D-F-M-L’ system update, the numbers still favor Anaheim slightly. One thing we should expect to see though, is Detroit outshooting Anaheim, and quite possibly by a significant margin. Lately in the NHL, however, this stat (SOG) has meant absolutely nothing.

– I actually don’t think that there is a lot of value with either Calgary or Vancouver given that they are such small underdogs on the road. In a way though, the lines in those games are kind of indications of how good their chances of winning their respective games are (pretty good).

– I’ve been pretty baffled by totals lately. There have been a couple of higher-scoring games this week, but overall, league-wide scoring is still down. Not sure if I like any Unders today though.

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