October 8th, 2014 - Opening Night
With no current season data to work with, it's only natural to look at recent H2H data to get a feel for these opening week games. If you've done just that, then you know all 5 matchups last season between Montreal and Toronto went O5.5. 4 of the 5 games saw 7+ goals. You might imagine that bettors are lining up to play the O tonight. I'm not sure I believe SS when they say 90% are on the O but needless to say, it's fairly high. So, why can we get +115 on the O at 5d? That's crazy, right? Well, maybe not. If you look at how Montreal sets up away from home, especially early in the season, you see, perhaps, why this line is shaded to the U despite the recent H2H data and the current bet%.
Since 2009-10-30, the UNDER is 14-1 when Montreal plays on the road in the month of October, with an avg. score of 2.5-1.5. Here is the SDQL query text that you can plug in at http://sportsdatabase.com/nhl/query
team=Canadiens and A and month=10 and date>=20091030
Please understand, this is more of a cautionary trend than a play-on trend. The O is sure to be a popular play and I just wanted to show the other side. BOL to everybody on this opening night. I can't wait.