Who will win the Stanley Cup? The season, odds, math and probability all collide when picking a favorite.

Updated April 16, 2025, 11 a.m. by Stephen Whyno 1 min read
NHL News

Everybodys got a hunch this time of year, a thought about the so-called Presidents Trophy curse or maybe a dark horse Stanley Cup pick.Only one team of the 16 in the NHL playoffs gets to be champion, and even before the first round begins Saturday, there is rampant disagreement on who the favorite actually is.Winnipeg and Washington were the top teams in the league all season, finishing atop the West and East, respectively, to earn home-ice advantage.

Florida is the defending champion looking for a third consecutive trip to the final.

Dallas is the oddsmakers top selection, while some metrics favor Carolina.What played out on the ice has collided with math, odds and probability in the debate over who will hoist the trophy in June.As great as the season has been for Winnipeg and Washington, I think most people would agree that theres not one team out there that really kind of screams, Oh, this is the team that should win the Stanley Cup this year, said Andy MacNeil, a hockey handicapper and host of The Puck Portfolio on Daily Faceoff.

Its just one of those years where even the Toronto Maple Leafs could finally go all the way and get to a Stanley Cup Final because the Eastern Conference, just like the Western Conference, I think is wide open right now.The sports booksBetMGM Sportsbook, which provides odds for The Associated Press, gives the Stars the edge at 13-2 early this week despite six straight losses down the stretch, blowing a chance to catch the Jets for first in the Central Division much less the West or Presidents Trophy.

The Panthers are next at 7-1, Colorado at 8-1, Edmonton 17-2, the Hurricanes 9-1, Washington 19-2, Vegas 10-1 and Tampa Bay and Winnipeg each 11-1.Dallas and Florida have been betting favorites since making big moves at the trade deadline.

Matthew Rasp, BetMGMs senior sports trader setting the opening odds for hockey, thinks the Stars adding Mikko Rantanen to an already stacked roster makes them the most formidable contender.The goaltending is strong for Dallas there (and) theyve got the veterans there, Rasp said.

Even though theyve kind of floundered here a bit of late theyve had some bad losses that have gotten a lot of publicity we still feel good about their goal differential and their team construct from top to bottom here.What the stats sayThe analytics disagree.The Stars odds equate to roughly a 13.3% chance of winning the Cup.

According to the hockey prediction site MoneyPucks data from 100,000 simulations, theyre sixth at 8.1%.As of last week, MoneyPuck had the Hurricanes with the highest odds.

As of Monday, it was the Jets.

On Tuesday, the Panthers held the top spot at 11.2%.It does look at recent play, but it does fluctuate some, said Peter Tanner, the data scientist who has run the site for nearly a decade.All US-based Original Six teams will miss the playoffs for the 1st time everMoneyPucks formula involves a combination of scoring chances, expected goals, goaltending and some other factors that look at recent success and even how some players and teams come up bigger in clutch moments.

Thats one way of trying to quantify a sport filled with inherent randomness.When I was a kid, I always thought the team that won the Cup was like the best team, Tanner said.

Now I think theyre probably a pretty good team that got lucky.The intangiblesThe NHL and Major League Baseball are the least likely major sports leagues to see the best regular-season team win a championship, followed by the NFL and the NBA, which is the most likely.There are so many intangibles in play in hockey player injuries, matchups across four forward lines, a goaltender on a dark horse team who gets rolling and shuts down more talented opponents.I also think theres just so much more parity now than, say, 20 years ago, so that kind of factors in, Tanner said, adding MoneyPucks highest-odds team has won the Cup just once since he started running the site.With no team with shorter odds than 6-1 and plenty of uncertainty on paths through the playoffs, Rasp said most of the money is coming in on longshots, like St.

Louis at 45-1, and Montreal at 80-1, even though neither team had clinched a spot going into games Tuesday.Weve seen it before in the past that these teams that have been playing meaningful hockey for the last month, they can catch fire, Rasp said.

Weve seen 8 seeds take out 1 seeds, and the teams that have taken the foot off the gas a little bit here, they can get caught in the first round playing against a team thats been playing playoff hockey for the last month or two.So who wins the Cup?Rasp thinks the Cup champion will come out of the West this year, given the high-profile talent on that side of the bracket.

Dallas and Colorado two of the top three favorites according to BetMGM play each other in first round, meaning one of the Central powerhouses will be out by round two along with anyone who bet on the series loser.I would say that a lot of operators are probably happy to see one of those two teams get knocked out in the early rounds, said MacNeil, who likes Los Angeles to knock off the Oilers and potentially make a run.

Theres value in the Kings at 20-1 or even the Maple Leafs at 12-1 under 2019 Cup-winning coach Craig Berube, trying to end the franchises and Canadas lengthy drought.Winnipeg has the NHLs top goaltender this season in Connor Hellebuyck, and the Lightning won back-to-back in 2020 and 21 with Andrei Vasilevskiy in net.

Tanner said having an elite goalie in his simulation only increases the odds of winning by up to 3% in the Jets case, but a hot goalie can often make the difference.Sometimes I think about it like the goalie is just getting lucky, but some call that hot, as well, Tanner said.

Its tricky.

The hardest thing to predict in hockey is goalies..

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