NHL weekend betting guide: True moneylines for March 18-20

It's not that different from any other sport, but betting on hockey rests on a metaphorical edge the width of a skate blade. And not just on the ice during a game, but in the 24 hours before puck drop.

For the uninitiated, moneyline prices are opened by sportsbooks the night before a contest is played. It's the first chance for bettors to weigh in on their opinion of a game at relatively low limits. Oddsmakers then shift the price toward the more heavily bet team.

Value-based betting is when you aim to bet on a club at a specific minimum price. That move can push a team from qualifying as bet-worthy to no longer worth it. There are also occasions when a squad becomes valuable after there's enough action on the other club.

With just one game Monday, let's look back at the Coyotes and Senators contest and see how the pricing in that matchup might have changed our perspective on it.

With our bi-weekly guide posting Monday morning, we couldn't jump on the Coyotes at +144 or better. Bettors saw the value in Arizona and modestly bet them down into the +120s. That value disappeared.

If you're an intrepid hockey handicapper, perhaps you were willing to blindly bet on the Coyotes anyway, and you'd have been rewarded. However, over the long term, it's a prudent betting practice to be disciplined enough to bet when the number is in your range and pass when it's not.

Of course, the thin line still exists after the bet is made. The following night, three valuable underdog bets at an average price of +165 went to the 50/50 coin flip of overtime. The Sharks and Blackhawks lost during 4-on-4, and the Islanders fell in a shootout. Sometimes good bets don't go the right way. In other cases, timing keeps you off a winner. Either way, you can rest easy knowing you have a plan.

The recipe

Before the 2021-22 campaign, we devised a three-part series on how to use the regular-season point-total market to create team ratings, how to interpret home-ice advantage, and then how to use those to create your own moneylines.

We made a small adjustment to our formula a couple of weeks ago, moving this season's on-ice predictive metrics to 75% of our total rating. While our ratings are weighted to this season, basing 25% of the ratings on preseason "priors" allows us to emphasize team metrics without going all-in on what's happened this campaign. That's important because this season is still a relatively small sample size that includes some tainted results from when COVID-19 ravaged lineups.

The stabilization of rosters at the All-Star break has meant that underdogs, or favorites that aren't favored by enough, are priced that way due to less quantifiable reasons, like public perception or short-term variance.

The cheat sheet

What follows is my fair price on the matchups (true moneyline) and the moneyline price I would need to bet either side. I just need a 1% edge for a favorite if we're getting better than a fair price on the team more likely to win. For the underdog, I'll need 4% or better to make it a bet. On games I've projected to be a near coin flip, a 2.5% edge is enough to make it a worthwhile wager. I also have a 5% win probability consideration for a side playing in the second game of a back-to-back with travel and 3% for without travel.

Matt Russell is a betting writer for theScore. If there’s a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. Find him on Twitter @mrussauthentic.