This video will give you tips on how to bet the NHL playoffs.
Here s my daddy, Professor MJ!
In case this is your first time watching any of my videos, my name is Professor MJ like
my son Mavrik just told you. I teach statistics to university students in Canada, and I have
been using the knowledge acquired from my PhD in statistics to crush online sportsbooks
for the last 20+ years. Welcome to my sports betting YouTube channel, my friend!
Section #1: Introduction.
I wanted to verify whether I could find a profitable betting strategy for the NHL playoffs
based on the following assumption: The public tends to overreact to recent results. In order
to do this, I analyzed data on more than 700 postseason hockey games.
For example, if a given team won the first game of the series but lost the next three,
should we bet on them since most of the public will probably overreact to the outcome of
the past three games?
For the sake of this video, the higher seed means the team that owns home-ice advantage.
Games 1, 2, 5 and 7 are played at the higher seed s arena, while games 3, 4 and 6 are played
at the lower seed s home.
So, in the tables that I m going to show you throughout the video, HS means "Higher Seed",
whereas LS means "Lower Seed."
The data I analyzed included a total of 708 games, which corresponds to all NHL playoff
matchups between the 2007/08 and 2015/16 seasons. I have decided to take out the 2012/13 playoff
games because the lockout shortened the season, which may have had an impact on how things
went and I did not want to introduce a potential bias in the data.
A word of caution before we jump into the main content: Several findings seem promising,
but we often end up with fairly small sample sizes so you should take it into consideration
before betting your house based on the results presented here. I m not saying the results
are worthless either, but please keep this fact in mind.
Let s move on to Section #2: The Results.
Let's kick off the analysis by betting on all higher seeds and all lower seeds in Game
#x of the series. We break down the results by the current series status.
For example, betting Game #3 when the HIGHER seed is leading 2-0, or when the series is
tied 1-1, or when the LOWER seed is up 2-0.
Let s start with Game #2 of the series; the results are appearing on your screen right
now. Remember that HS means Higher Seed, while LS means Lower Seed. On the first row, we
look at how things went when the higher seed led the series 1-0 and on the second row we
consider the case where the LOWER seed led the series 1-0.
In the second and third columns, you see the number of wins by the higher and lower seeds,
respectively. So for example, when the higher seed led the series 1-0, they held a 43-31
record in the second meeting.
In the following two columns, I am presenting you the PROFIT and the return on investment
(also called ROI) from betting the HIGHER seed. As you can see, despite posting a winning
record, we lost 4.27 units from betting the higher seed. That s because they must have
been pretty big favorites in those games, so their odds were fairly low. By the way,
those numbers assume that we risked 1 unit per wager.
Then, the last 2 columns unveil the profit and the ROI from betting the LOWER seed. So,
still looking at the first row only, we realize that we would have won 2.04 units from betting
the lower seed, even though we would have won just 31 bets and lost 43.
Several studies have shown that it is best, generally speaking, to bet road underdogs
as opposed to any of the other three possibilities (home underdogs, home favorites, or road favorites).
You lose less money, on average, by betting road underdogs.
Still, I certainly did not expect to find a POSITIVE profit simply by betting the lower
seed in Game #2 of all 120 series in the dataset!!
The ROI is twice better when the lower seed won the first game, which goes against my
initial hypothesis that people overreact to recent games.
Let s now focus on Game #3 of the series. You are seeing on your screen a table that
s similar to the previous one, but this time it concerns the third game of the series.
This time, there are 3 rows since there are 3 possibilities, or 3 series status.
The only profitable strategy occurs when betting the higher seed in series which are tied at
one game apiece.
The rationale might be that the higher seed puts more effort and energy in such games
because of the danger of falling down 2-1 with the next game being played on the road
again, whereas they could be complacent when leading 2-0.
But then, shouldn t they be playing with desperation when trailing the series 2-0? Perhaps their
confidence is gone and the lower seed plays with passion in front of their home fans after
winning the first two games of the series on the road. Who knows?
I can t say I would be very confident about betting the higher seed every time the series
is tied 1-1 because I trust a lot more strategies that follow my initial intuition.
Now, what about Game #4 of the series? Wow, I absolutely love what I m seeing here!!!
At the very beginning I said I wanted to verify if we should bet against the grain by taking
the team that has struggled the most recently.
In this case, when the higher seed leads the series 3-0 we find a positive profit from
betting the lower seed, while when the lower seed leads the series 3-0 we make money by
betting the higher seed.
I could not have drawn it any better than this!
It s now time to focus on Game #5 of the series! Oh my God It gets even better! Once again,
things go in the exact direction I was looking for.
If we had bet on the lower seed every single time it trailed the series 3-1 over the past
9 seasons (except the 2012/13 season), we would have made an unbelievable 53.7% ROI!!
As mentioned earlier, the sample size (38) is fairly small so we are probably overperforming:
the true ROI is likely to be smaller, but signs are strong that it is a viable strategy.
Now, if you had bet all higher seeds when trailing the series 3-1, you would have made
a 17.4% ROI, which is still nice! I m impressed by the 16-7 record in such circumstances.
Let us now put our attention on Game #6, shall we?
The numbers in the table indicate to bet the lower seed when trailing the series 3-2. That
goes in accordance with the initial hypothesis, too. For this reason, I am liking this option!
The 3rd section of this video is entitled: Specific Paths
What if we break down the results into specific paths ? Uh?!? What do I mean by a path ?
Consider the case where the higher seed leads the series 3-2. We just saw that it is a good
strategy to bet the LOWER seed in Game #6.
Now, is it even more profitable if the lower seed won the first two games and then lost
the next three, which means we saw the following path: LS, LS, HS, HS, HS? According to my
intuition, it should be because the public might overreact to the outcome of the past
three meetings.
With this in mind, let s revisit some of the cases to see what happens. We cannot run this
type of analysis on some of the strategies presented earlier because there is only one
possible path. For example, the higher seed leading the series 3-0 can only happen in
the following way: HS, HS, HS.
Accordingly, we ll revisit in more details four strategies we saw before.
First, let s take a deeper look at the case where the series is tied at one game apiece.
In the first row, we have the path HS, LS, which means the higher seed won the first
game before the lower seed won the second matchup.
In the table, we get exactly what I was hoping for: We make much more money by betting the
higher seed when it lost its previous game. As a matter of fact, we don t seem to be making
any money at all when it is coming off a win.
Up next we have the strategy of betting the lower seed that s down 3-1 in the series.
Still based on the reasoning that people put too much emphasis on recent results, we would
expect to be making more money when the lower seed lost the past three games.
Despite the pretty small sample sizes, that s what we observe here as the highest ROI
occurs for this specific path. However, I believe the main thing to remember from the
table above is we are making money no matter what the path was.
Now, what if we devote some time to the case where we like to bet the higher seed when
it is trailing the series 3-to-1?
As you can see, we witness a similar pattern as the previous case: All four possible paths
lead to positive returns.
Last but not least is the situation where we might bet the lower seed who is trailing
the series 3 games to 2.
Again, I m thrilled with the results since they are in accordance with the initial intuition.
Remember we are betting the lower seed, so we expect to make more money when the most
recent games went to the higher seed.
When the higher seed won the last two games, betting the lower seed led to a 7-3 record
with a profit of 4.23 units.
When the higher seed won the last game, betting the lower seed led to an 18-9 record with
a profit of 8.03 units. Pretty amazing!
Finally, when the lower seed won the last game we expect to make LESS money, which is
exactly what happened: a 9-12 record with a loss of 3.84 units.
So the final word here is to bet the lower seed when trailing the series 3-2, but only
if it is coming off a loss.
Section #4: NHL playoffs betting tips.
Let s summarize the way we should approach the NHL playoffs from a betting perspective:
In Game #2, bet the lower seed no matter the outcome of the first game.
In Game #3, bet the higher seed if it won the first game before losing the second.
In Game #4, bet any team that s trailing the series 3-0.
In Game #5, bet any team that s trailing the series 3-to-1.
Finally, in Game #6, bet the lower seed if it is trailing the series 3-2 and it lost
the previous match.
Section #5 answer a very interesting question: How did this betting system do in recent years?
I mentioned at the very beginning of this video that the data used in the present study
concerned the 2007/08 to 2015/16 NHL seasons (excluding the lockout 2012/13 season).
How did the strategy perform since then?
Here is the answer: You should probably focus more on the 3 columns with a blue heading
that shows you the OVERALL performance of the NHL playoff betting system explained earlier.
The next 10 columns simply break down the results for games number 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
You can take a deeper look later by pausing this video, if you wish.
During the 2017 NHL postseason, we lost 4.22 units via 31 bets.
The next year, in 2018, we lost a tiny 0.17 unit through 33 bets.
Then, things started going very well for us. In the 2019 NHL playoffs, we earned a 7.33-unit
profit over 31 bets.
Finally, during the 2020 NHL postseason, we gained 7.06 units via 35 bets.
If you add up all of those numbers, we have therefore placed 130 bets over 4 years, and
those wagers yielded a profit of 10 units. That s a return on investment of 7.7%, which
is great!
Just a quick note, though: I m not sure how much weight we should give to the 2020 playoffs
since there were no fans and teams played all games in Toronto and Edmonton. In other
words, home-ice advantage didn t mean much.
Still, the betting system described in this video has done very well over the past four
NHL postseasons!
So, did you appreciate this video whose objective is to make you a winner during the Stanley
Cup playoffs? If so, subscribe to my sports betting YouTube channel to get more great
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And that s not it! I also make videos that teach important sports betting lessons, like
Stop Doing Parlays , which is one of the most common mistake that gamblers do. I strongly
invite you to watch it because it could save you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars
throughout the course of your betting career. Simply click the card appearing in the bottom-left
corner of your screen right now to watch it! I m Professor MJ, it was a pleasure talking
to you and I m looking forward to give you more sports betting advice! Bye bye!