Power Rankings & Games We’re Betting (01/10)
Total YTD Stats: Record 24-17, P&L of $525 or 9% ROI (1)
You work in this business long enough, you’re bound to have weeks like this. “The market can stay irrational longer than we can stay solvent.” A phrase well known to Wall Streeters, and one I found myself muttering during restless nights this past week. Edmonton dropped both their games—as favorites, I might add—after holding 2-0 leads, which effectively erased any chance we had of keeping our heads above water. All in all, we went 5-6 over our 11 game slate, losing $177 in the process. Our season long ROI has now dipped to 9%. Not good enough. Favorites once again carried the day, going 5-2, while our dogs went 0-4. Any sensible person would look at the data and say it’s time to alter the strategy and limit the amount of exposure we take these on these plus-money pups. Yeah, I don’t think so. I don’t do this because I’m sensible. I do this because I’m a dog.
With favorites on a near-month-long winning streak, though, now might be the time to root around in the back for teams the market has lazily discarded as trash. We will eat anything when we’re hungry.
The Flyers and Blue Jackets—teams way past their expiration date—fit this profile, and the model has taken notice of their recent improvement in underlying play. So we are going to plug our noses and dig in. After what they did to us last week, it would take a deeply deranged individual to hop back on the Oilers, but that’s exactly what we are going to do, as they give us our best shot to get on the opposite side of two major fade candidates, Vegas and Sharks. Sizing it all up, I remain cautiously optimistic that we can restart rotating alpha from the books, by staying committed to our core strategy with a tactical overweighting to dogs this week.
Man’s best friend? We’ll see.
Ok, switching gears: after an outpouring of positive feedback, we are going back to the deep-dive format.
The Nashville Predators have steadily moved up our power rankings the past two weeks and look every part a team worth backing. Let’s take a closer look.
While goaltender Juuse Saros made headlines recently, we think it’s the resurgent play of Roman Josi that’s mostly responsible for this little run. No player seems to influence play—good or bad—the way Josi does. Hell, he plays just about half the game, how could he not? It was an ugly start to the year—especially for a player of Josi’s caliber—with 7pts and a minus-11 through the first dozen or so games. It should come as no surprise that over that time period, Nashville won only 5 games (good for 25th place in the league). Lately, things have seemed to come easier for Josi with his partner McDonagh back from injury. This steadying presence has allowed Josi to take those calculated risks that make him such a dangerous player. Look no further than Monday’s goal where he quickly turns a broken play (where he over-pursued the puck and was clearly caught up ice) into a two-on-one bang-home goal. That’s Josi for ya!
Power Rankings – Week beginning January 9th:
This week, here are the sides the model has identified as actionable:
Stay tuned for a recap of the action and the latest Power Rankings from Along the Ice next week!
Chaser
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(1) P&L and ROI tracked using Action Network. P&L assumes wagers are to win $100 per hypothetical bet.
