Predators Lead 2018 Stanley Cup Odds, Avalanche Bring Up Rear

• The 2018 Stanley Cup futures have Nashville on top. 
• Is Nashville really twice as likely to lift the cup than reigning champion Pittsburgh?
• The teams with the two Hart Trophy favorites have nearly identical odds. Should they?

With the 2018 NHL playoffs starting tonight (April 11), there’s time for one last look at the Stanley Cup futures.

As our odds tracker — which aggregates the futures from the best online betting sites — shows, the best regular-season teams are generally getting the most love in the wagering world. Nashville, Tampa Bay, and Boston, who finished the year first, third, and fourth in points, are the top three favorites. (It seems the Jets’ 114-point regular season, which was second-best in the league, hasn’t silenced all their doubters, as they currently sit fifth.)

Which teams stand out as being overvalued or undervalued at this stage?

Nashville Is Way Too Short

The Predators deserve to be the favorites, certainly, but +450? That’s too optimistic.

Their +450 moneyline equates to an 18.2% chance of winning the cup, which is almost twice as likely as the defending champion Penguins (+960; 9.4% chance). No team should be that short this year, or most years, not with the parity in the modern NHL.

The playoffs are often described as a “crapshoot” because so-called upsets abound. Nashville’s run to the finals last year started from a Wild Card berth, and Wild Card teams are 5-7 in the first-round over the last three years.

Since 2002, only two teams have won the President’s Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season.

Need more reason to fade the regular-season champs? Since 2002, only two teams have won the President’s Trophy and the Stanley Cup in the same season (2007-08 Red Wings; 2012-13 Blackhawks).

That being said, the Preds do have a soft first-round matchup with the Colorado Avalanche, speaking of whom …

Colorado and New Jersey Are Not Equals

The Avalanche (+3550; 2.7% chance) and Devils (+3200; 3% chance) are the two biggest longshots in the field. The narrow gap in their odds should be bigger, because one team has a chance and the other does not.

The Avs sputter into the playoffs with a 4-5-1 record over their last ten and will have to win four straight series without home-ice advantage in order to lift the cup. For a team that went 15-19-7 on the road this year and will be missing its starting goalie (Semyon Varlamov) for at least the first round, that’s a huge problem.

Nathan Mackinnon deserves all the praise he’s been getting, and he’ll be a worthy runner-up to Taylor Hall in the Hart Trophy race, but his team is not long for this playoff world.

The Devils, on the other hand, have a real chance to pull an upset or two. They fly into the playoffs, going 7-2-1 in their last ten, and were over .500 on the road this year (21-15-5). They also beat Tampa Bay, their first-round opponent, all three times they squared off in the regular season.

Scoring depth has to be a concern. Hall (93 pts) had 41 more points than his closest teammate, and that teammate is a rookie (Nico Hischier, 52 pts). But it’s not like Tampa has a shutdown line they can throw on Hall.

In net, Cory Schneider had a down year, but he sports a .920 career SV% and .922 playoff SV%. He is absolutely the type of goalie who can get hot, Cam Ward-style, and carry a team farther than it has any right going. (If he gets the start over Keith Kinkaid, anyway.)