Injury Reports for Divisional Weekend as of Wednesday Evening
***We avoid posting players who logged a full practice (Unless working back from injury), or missed due to illness. We also focus on players who regularly play and rotate in. We won't post a back-up's status unless part of a cluster of injuries including the starters.
Buffalo at Denver (Saturday)
Buffalo - RB Ty Johnson DNP, TE Dalton Kincaid Limited, EDGE Greg Rousseau Limited, EDGE A.J. Epenesa Limited, LB Terrel Bernard Limited, LB Matt Milano Limited, LB Shaq Thompson Limited, CB Maxwell Hairston DNP, S Jordan Poyer Out, WR Curtis Samuel Full (Working back from I.R.), DT Ed Oliver Limited (Working back from I.R.), S Damar Hamlin Full (Working back from I.R.)
Denver - LB Dre Greenlaw Limited, LB Drew Sanders Limited (Working back from I.R.)
San Francisco at Seattle (Saturday Nighter)
San Francisco - WR Ricky Pearsall Limited, OG Dominick Puni Limited, EDGE Keion White Limited, EDGE Yetur Gross-Matos Limited, LB Dee Winters Limited, LB Luke Gifford DNP, S Ji'Ayir Brown Out, LB Fred Warner Limited (Working back from I.R.)
Seattle - OT Charles Cross Limited, OT Josh Jones DNP, CB Tariq Woolen Limited, TE Elijah Arroyo Full (Working back from I.R.)
Houston at New England (Sunday)
Houston - RB Jawhar Jordan Limited, WR Nico Collins DNP, WR Justin Watson DNP, OT Trent Brown DNP, OG Tytus Howard Limited, OG Ed Ingram Limited, EDGE Denico Autry DNP, DT Sheldon Rankins Limited, LB Azeez Al-Shaiir Limited, CB Kamari Lassiter Limited
New England - OT Morgan Moses DNP, OT Thayer Munford Jr. DNP, TE Hunter Henry Limited, EDGE Harold Landry Limited, EDGE Anfernee Jennings Limited, NT Khyiris Tonga Limited, CB Christian Gonzalez Limited, RB Terrell Jennings (Working back from I.R.)
Green Bay at Chicago (Sunday Nighter)
L.A. Rams - OG Kevin Dotson Limited, NT Poona Ford Limited
Chicago - WR Rome Odunze Limited, WR D.J. Moore Limited, CB Nick McCloud DNP, OT Braxton Jones Full (Working back from I.R.)
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Expected Goals, Actual Opinions: Thoughts on the NHL betting market
By: Alex Moretto, Director of Content at the Hammer Betting Network
1.) In last week’s newsletter I called into question the efficiency of the NHL market. Every day I’m given new examples that strengthen my belief in its inefficiency, but there’s one that especially stood out from the past week that I’d like to touch on here.
Connor Bedard made his return to the Blackhawks lineup on Friday. There was speculation he could return that night to face the Capitals, prompting some early Chicago money. It was eventually confirmed at morning skate, as the Hawks took even more money, moving from a peak of +132 overnight to as short as +107, eventually settling at +110 ahead of pregame warmups – a nearly 5% move.
On Monday, Frank Seravalli reported at 7:51pm ET that Bedard would miss Chicago’s game against Edmonton with an illness – a complete surprise with no previous warning after he was a full participant at morning skate. The Oilers crawled on Pinny, ever so slowly, from -153 to -165. There was even buyback on the Blackhawks mixed in there.
To summarize: on Friday the market believes Bedard is worth 5%. On Monday, less than 2%. Okay.
2.) Been seeing a lot of “Leafs are back” on my timeline, in the media, and in the Hammer Daily chat. They’re 8-1-2 in their last 11 since firing assistant coach Marc Savard, who was apparently doing the worst job anyone has ever done in running a power play given the immediate returns that unit has seen since his departure. I’m not sure how much I’m buying into this winning run, though. The win over the Avalanche on Monday is one for the mantle, although that easily could (and should) have been a loss given how that one played out – Colorado more than doubled them in expected goals at 5-on-5. The other seven wins? They beat Pittsburgh (bad), reeling Senators and Devils teams with miserable goaltending, a last-place (at the time) Jets team that was in the second half of a back-to-back (also their third game in four nights), a significantly depleted Panthers roster, a free-falling Flyers team (in overtime), and the current last-placed Canucks. Now you can only beat who is in front of you, but it’s how they’re winning these games that has me most skeptical.
Over this 11-game span they have an expected goal share of 45% (26th in the NHL, just below the Jets and above the Kraken). They are 26th in shot attempts/60 and 30th in shot attempts against/60, leaving then 28th in shot attempt share, just below the Flames and Rangers. Their 41.5% share of High Danger Chances is 30th in the NHL, just below the Blues and Jets. They’re 31st in expected goals for/60, but goalies have posted a collective minus-8.73 goals saved above expected against them during this run so we haven’t noticed. Meanwhile, Toronto’s goalies have combined to save 8.98 goals above expected over that same span – a nearly 18-goal difference between them. They’re also getting unsustainably great returns on special teams, where they’ve posted a 96.2 Net PK% (first in the NHL) and a 28.0 Net PP% (seventh in the NHL) over that span.
Water always finds its level, as they say. The Leafs are better than they showed in the first two months, but nowhere close to as good as their record over the last three weeks. The reality is they fall somewhere in between, but the underlying metrics dating all the way back to last season are rather uninspiring, and I’d say they’re still closer to the team they were in the first two months than what they’ve showed the past three weeks. FanDuel has them +135 to make the playoffs (42.6%), which I think is pretty close to fair.
3.) There are a number of to make/miss playoff numbers in market that I don’t think are anywhere close to fair, though. I haven’t given out many bets in this column of late, so let’s change that now. Here are some playoff prices at FanDuel I love at current (as always, do shop around):
-Washington Capitals to make the playoffs -210
-Utah Mammoth to make the playoffs -155
-Winnipeg Jets to make the playoffs +380
-Seattle Kraken to miss the playoffs -210
-New Jersey Devils to miss the playoffs -200
-Philadelphia Flyers to miss the playoffs -145
4.) There’s a lot of blame to go around in New Jersey for the current predicament the Devils find themselves in – a team most had comfortably penciled into a playoff spot but now finds its season circling the drain, again. One of the biggest, in my opinion, is how poorly the team has drafted. Jack Hughes and Nico Hischier were both consensus first-overall picks, so there’s no credit awarded there. Jesper Bratt is their only real draft hit (162nd overall in 2016). Beyond that, returns have been terrible from their draft classes.
The 2017-2020 classes were especially bad. In 2017 they got nothing from their 10 picks after taking Hischier first overall (they took Jesper Boqvist at 36, just a couple picks before Jason Robertson and Eetu Luostarinen). They missed on 2018 17th-overall pick Ty Smith and traded away the only other NHLers from that class (Akira Schmid, Yegor Sharangovich). In 2019, after taking Hughes first overall, they had six picks in rounds 2-4. Those players have combined to play 30 games for the Devils. In 2020 they took Alexander Holtz seventh overall. The next seven picks were Jack Quinn, Marco Rossi, Cole Perfetti, Yaroslav Askarov, Anton Lundell, Seth Jarvis, and Dylan Holloway. They took Dawson Mercer that same year, who has been about their only “hit” in recent memory. They had four other picks from rounds 1-4 that year and only one of them has played games for the team – Nico Daws (53).
We’ll see what happens with 2021 fourth-overall pick Luke Hughes and 2022 second-overall pick Simon Nemec, but Hughes was just recently booed on home ice for how bad he’s been, and Nemec is struggling to put it all together. It’s really hard to find sustained success in this league when you have to constantly build out your roster through free agency and trades. Largely wasting all that draft capital from 2018-2020 is a huge reason the Devils are
5.) Quick hitters:
-Connor Hellebuyck in 13 starts since returning from injury: -4.53 GSAA (63rd in NHL), 3.53 GSAx (30th), .882 SV% (42nd), 3.01 GAA (t-45th)
-Pending UFA Alex Tuch is earning himself quite the payday. He’s seventh in the NHL in five-on-five points/60 this season
-No one has more five-on-five points since December 20th than… Juraj Slafkovsky
-Noah Dobson’s 21 five-on-five points are more than any Islanders player this season (Anders Lee and Matt Barzal are tied atop the team with 19 each)
-The catalyst behind the Ducks’ current 3-11-2 run? A league-worst (by a decent margin) .847 save percentage
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