NHL Streaks – About what you would believe

During an NHL season, there are many bumps in the road or areas that look like I-40 in Northwest Texas, where it is vast as the eye can see. Teams have to be able to maneuver away from the bad times and hope to stay on the straight and narrow when things are going just dandy.

With the NHL season at nearly the halfway point of the year, thought it would time to check in on how to wager on streaking teams. We set our benchmark at four games, be it winning or losing and tried to cover all aspects: home favorite and underdog and the same roles for the road teams.

Starting with home favorites on a four game winning streak, they did as about as expected, winning 70.5 percent of the time, with 12-5 record, gathering +5.4 units of profit. Two things stood out in our discovery, the East teams were 9-1 and the West just 3-4. About the only reason for this occurring were fairly average teams like Edmonton started 4-0 before coming back to reality. The other piece of info for hockey bettors that is noteworthy, teams on four-game winning streaks that are home favorites of -150 or more are perfect 8-0.

Though the numbers are dramatically smaller and not truly usable sample, home underdogs on the same streak are 3-0, +3.5 units.

The good times continued for visiting money line hockey clubs, playing well when they hit the road with a 6-2 mark, bring home a profit of +3.16 units, as they kept the confidence level high, even in visiting arenas. The same wasn’t true for those few marked by oddsmakers as road underdogs. Here, those setting the numbers tell us emphatically they are not impressed with our four-game streaker and they have gone on to lose on all three occasions.

As we all know, losing isn’t fun and it hasn’t been a wise idea to risk money when NHL clubs are going backwards for a spell.

Home favorites after four losses, isn’t as painful as foreclosure, but it still hurts. In eight opportunities this season, they have managed only two wins, dropping 6.4 units. This points to how difficult it can be to break a downward spiral even before the home fans as the better team.
Home underdogs on the money line or road favorites succumb with regularity, posting a 1-5 record (one home win). When the losses mount, it is not easy to just to will yourself to a win, typically something has to happen and suddenly you can breakthrough with a win, this has not been the case in these two categories.

A road underdog having lost four consecutive hockey games, well it’s uglier than a 2009 calendar of celebrity mugshots. Of the 19 games these “losers’ have played in this role, they have come away on the short end of the scoreboard 15 times, causing puck bettors to lose 9.07 units.

In conclusion, when a team is hot, having won four consecutive games, ride with them unless they are a road dog. These teams are 21-7; bring home +12.06 units of profit. On the other hand, if they are losing on continual basis, follow that trend as these hockey squads are 7-26, -19.71 units.