NHL weekly betting guide: True moneylines for every game

The Arizona Coyotes were on the road for a half-dozen games to start their season because the Tempe-area rental they found on Zillow wasn't quite ready for tenants. Here are the scores of their four losses: 6-2, 6-3, 6-2, and 6-2.

If you had blindly bet on the Coyotes in each of those six games, your ticket got blown out to the desert immediately in four of them, as they were either down 2-0 or 3-0 at the first intermission.

If you had blindly bet on the Coyotes' moneyline in each of those six games, you would also have more money in your account than you would have started with.

Every team has a price, and Arizona's turned out to be valuable. A win over the Maple Leafs at +420 negated four other nights of feeling foolish, and beating the Blue Jackets on the way home for another +1.85 units returned all profit for that portion of the schedule.

Since the point of this weekly article is to remind ourselves that price matters, it's good to look at an individual bet as being profitable over a period of time instead of as just one game. Four of the other lowest-rated teams before the season were the Blackhawks, Canadiens, Flyers, and Sabres, and they entered Sunday as a collective 19-13 on the moneyline. I don't have to tell you this group hasn't been favored much early in the campaign.

There are no bad bets at the right price.

The recipe

We started the campaign using regular-season point totals as a baseline for rating teams since it's still the best measurement we have. Throughout the season, we'll adjust club ratings using our on-ice metrics of choice to remove the cognitive bias of win-loss records, which various outliers like special teams results, poor goaltending performances, and other unreliable events - such as three-on-three overtime and the shootout - can skew.

The cheat sheet

The following includes my fair price on the games (true moneyline) and the moneyline price I'd need to bet either side. I only 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. For games I project to be closer to a coin flip, a 2.5% edge is enough for a worthwhile wager. I also have a 5% win probability consideration for a team playing in the second game of a back-to-back with travel and a 3% consideration for a team on the second leg of a back-to-back without travel. When it comes to injured players, I will do my best to guess the impact on their team's win probability.

When the betting markets open up the night before, you can compare those prices with our "price to bet" column to see if you're getting any value with either side's moneyline. There's also a possibility that a moneyline moves into a betable range at some point between market open and puck drop.

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.