Canucks visit Avs in clash between Northwest's top two teams

Hockey Betting Lines

03/09/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Of all the games the Vancouver Canucks have played on their NHL-record 14-game road trip, tonight's contest with the Colorado Avalanche could be the most important.

Northwest Division-leading Vancouver will try to extend its two-point edge over second-place Colorado in the standings when the clubs clash Tuesday night at Pepsi Center.

The Canucks are 7-5-0 thus far on their swing, including wins in three of four since the Olympic break. Vancouver's 4-2 victory over Nashville gave the franchise its 40th win in 65 games, the fastest the club has ever reached that mark in team history.

Still, Vancouver leads Colorado by just two points but has outscored the Avalanche 16-7 in winning three of the four meetings this year. That includes an 8-2 triumph when the team's last met at Pepsi Center on November 14. Henrik Sedin notched his first career hat trick in that win, the Canucks' third in their last four trips to Colorado.

Sedin was one of four goal scorers in Sunday's win over Nashville, as his empty-net tally capped a three-goal third period to complete the rally. Mikael Samuelsson netted his career-high 24th goal of the game and Jannik Hansen had the game-winner with 5:42 left in the third.

It marked the NHL-leading ninth time the Canucks have won after trailing at the beginning of the third period.

Samuelsson, who scored 23 goals with Detroit in 2005-06, has scored in three straight and five of his last six games, while teammate Ryan Kesler had an assist to run his point streak to nine games (5 goals, 5 assists).

"We got some lucky breaks [Sunday]," said Samuelsson. "You know, sometimes those breaks go the other way, but tonight they went our way and we were able to get the win."

Roberto Luongo made 33 stops for Vancouver, which ends its epic swing Wednesday in Phoenix before returning home on Saturday for the first time since January 27.

Colorado plays the middle portion of a three-game homestand tonight and won for the sixth time in nine games with a 7-3 triumph over St. Louis on Saturday. Chris Stewart led the Avs' highest single-game goal output this season with his first career hat trick, capping the feat on a penalty shot.

"It's always big when you get your first NHL hat trick," said Stewart, who also had an assist and was named the NHL's First Star of the Week on Monday after totaling five goals and four assists in four games. "But more importantly we got the win. It was a big two points we nabbed [Saturday]."

Colorado, which had lost three of four coming in, has won six of seven and 10 of its last 13 as the host.

Milan Hejduk, who had missed the last 17 games due to knee and back ailments, scored a pair of goals and T.J. Galiardi had a goal and two assists. Craig Anderson had 39 saves in the win.

Defenseman Ruslan Salei left the contest with a torso injury in the second period, putting his status for tonight in doubt. Fellow blueliner Kyle Cumiskey is expected to play tonight for the first time since February 12, however. He had missed the last five games due to a head injury.

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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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