Slumping Devils attempt to rebound against hard-luck Oilers

Hockey Betting Lines

03/07/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The New Jersey Devils conclude a string of four consecutive road games with tonight's matchup with an Edmonton Oilers team that'll be gunning for a rare winning streak.

New Jersey has gone just 1-2-0 thus far on the stretch, which began with a 5-2 defeat at Carolina on February 13 before the NHL ceased operations for the Winter Olympics. The Devils came out strong in their first outing after the break and delivered a 4-3 decision over Pacific Division leader San Jose on Tuesday, but had a shakier showing in a 5-3 loss at Calgary on Friday.

The Flames erased an early 1-0 deficit by scoring three times in the second period, then tacked on two more goals to begin the third to build a commanding 5-1 lead. All five tallies came against Martin Brodeur, with the legendary New Jersey netminder managing just 20 saves on 25 shots for the night.

"It's a game that we knew how (Calgary) would play," Devils head coach Jacques Lemaire said. "This is their game. It's a hard-working team, and you have to work harder. That's all."

Zach Parise accounted for two of the Devils' goals, with both coming off feeds from Travis Zajac, who extended his point streak to six games (3 goals, 6 assists) with the two helpers.

The loss was the ninth in the past 13 games (4-7-2) for New Jersey, which has fallen out of first place in the Atlantic Division with that poor stretch. The Devils enter today's play trailing Pittsburgh by three points for the division's top spot and own a two-point edge on Ottawa for the fourth playoff seed in the Eastern Conference.

New Jersey figures to have a chance to get back into the win column this evening, considering the Oilers have the NHL's worst record at 20-38-6 and have dropped 20 of their last 24 games. Edmonton does enter tonight's tilt on a rare high note, though, after besting Minnesota in a shootout Friday at Rexall Place.

Mike Comrie scored the Oilers' lone regulation goal against the Wild, then gave his club a hard-fought 2-1 win by pushing a backhander past Minnesota's Nicklas Backstrom in the sixth round of the shootout.

"When you're battling hard and not getting the wins it's frustrating and they add up and for us," Comrie said afterward. "I think what we have to do is to continue to work hard. I don't think anybody is happy with the way the season has gone, and this organization is continuing to try and change the culture back to the pride of being an Edmonton Oiler."

Jeff Deslauriers also turned in a sharp performance in Saturday's win, with the Edmonton netminder stopping 28-of-29 shots prior to the shootout and thwarting four of the six Minnesota skaters in the deciding phase.

Since stringing together four straight wins from December 3-11, the Oilers have gone a woeful 5-25-2 and have recorded back-to-back victories just once during that brutal stretch, a pair of home triumphs over Carolina and Philadelphia from February 1-3.

Edmonton did come through with a 2-1 road win over the Devils last season, snapping a three-game losing streak in this series. New Jersey has gone unbeaten in its last six stops at Rexall Place, however, amassing five victories and a tie during that span.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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