Jason Chen looks at the BetMGM odds to see whether the Vegas Golden Knights or Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup favorites and considers other factors.
Jason Chen looks at the BetMGM odds to see whether the Vegas Golden Knights or Florida Panthers are Stanley Cup favorites and considers other factors.
Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final will be on Saturday, June 3, which means there’s plenty of time to digest the odds and the series.
After eliminating the Stars on Monday, the Golden Knights will get four days’ rest, while the Panthers will have had nine days off. How that extended rest will impact the Panthers’ incredible run will be interesting to see, and note they had five days’ rest before sweeping the Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference final.
As the higher seed, the Knights will get home-ice advantage to start the series, where they are 6-3, though the Panthers are 8-1 on the road. The season series was split 1-1, with Sergei Bobrovsky and Adin Hill starting both games. The games were relatively tight, considering the explosion of offense this season, averaging just 4.5 goals scored per game. Taking the under at 5.5 goals is the smarter choice considering past history.
As of May 31, 2023, the Knights are the slight favorites at -130 (1.77 for decimal odds), and the Panthers at +110 (2.10). The Knights are getting most of the betting action with 59 percent of the bets as of May 30, but there’s been a lot more money placed on the Panthers with 70 percent of the handle. Translation: more people think the Knights will win, but the Panthers are a hot bandwagon and attracting bigger bets as underdogs.
The Panthers certainly keep flipping the script as the underdogs. We saw this recently with the Blues in 2019 with their historic run, and there must be something in the water in Florida with the Panthers and the NBA’s Miami Heat making the finals despite being the lowest-ranked seed, both of whom also eliminated top-tier Boston-based teams in the process.
While upsets are more common in the NHL, aside from the Panthers, only one other team has staged an upset this post-season – the Kraken knocking off the defending champion Avalanche in the first round. Of the four higher seeds in the second round, three of them advanced to the conference finals. Compared to the previous season, three of the four higher seeds failed to advance.
Quick starts will be key. The Panthers and Knights both rushed out to 2-0 leads in the conference finals and never relinquished those leads. After both teams lost Game 1 in the opening round, they have not lost any Game 1s, nor have they trailed in any series since.
The 2021 Tampa Bay Lightning and the 2022 Colorado Avalanche similarly jumped out to 2-0 leads in the finals to win the Cup, but that was also after a three-year stretch where the winners lost Game 1 of the series in 2018, 2019 and 2020. The Knights are slightly favored on the money line for Game 1.
It’s exciting because there will be a guaranteed first-time winner after we saw first-time champs in 2018 and 2019 with the Capitals and Blues, respectively. While the Knights are a more familiar face, including six returnees from the 2018 squad that lost to the Caps – Brayden McNabb, Shea Theodore, Reilly Smith, William Karlsson, Jonathan Marchessault and William Carrier – they also pack plenty of experience with former Cup winners Alex Pietrangelo and Ivan Barbashev with the Blues (2019), Alec Martinez and Jonathan Quick with the Kings (2012 and 2014), and Phil Kessel with the Penguins (2016 and 2017).
The Panthers will be handicapped in this regard by a significant margin, with only three players who had experience playing in the finals. Eric Staal (2006 with the Hurricanes) and Carter Verhaeghe (2020 with the Lightning) are the only ones with rings. Marc Staal’s Rangers were eliminated in 2014 by the Kings with Quick and Martinez, and should he win a ring, the Staals will become just the third set of brothers to have their names engraved on the Cup, following Lionel, Charlie and Roy Conacher, and Darryl, Duane and Brett Sutter.
Paul Maurice and Bruce Cassidy are also looking for their first Cup wins. Both coaches are in the first year with their new team but are making their second appearance in the finals. Maurice’s Canes were crushed by the Red Wings dynasty in 2002, while Cassidy’s Bruins lost in 2019 in seven games. Cassidy’s career 50-46 (.521) record in the playoffs just edges Maurice’s 53-55 (.491), though Cassidy has had much more recent success.
As for the Conn Smythe, Matthew Tkachuk should be the Panthers’ MVP and the shoo-in should they win the Cup. Sergei Bobrovsky was brilliant against the Canes, but the award is reserved for those who have been spectacular throughout the entire run and not just a single round. Certainly, a strong showing from Bobrovsky in the finals would put him in contention, but he would have to be more outstanding than Tkachuk, and no one else in the playoffs has come close to making the kind of impact Tkachuk has had.
The Knights’ more balanced approach will be tougher to parse. Jack Eichel is their scoring leader by one point ahead of Marchessault, though Eichel has noticeably elevated his level of play, and he was the betting favorite for Conn Smythe among the Knights’ players going into the conference finals. Adin Hill was at +2200 (23.00) as of May 17, and by save percentage and GAA, he’s arguably been the best goalie of the playoffs. The Knights would not be here without his steady play, even if the Knights have a solid defensive group in front of him, and would be a very interesting dark horse bet.
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