New Jersey Devils Were the Best Team to Fade Last Season; Who Else Was in the Top-5?

• The New Jersey Devils offered the worst Return on Investment (ROI) for bettors last year at -18.55%
• New Jersey was among a number of bottom-feeders who made off-season improvements with an eye towards 2019/20
• Who will improve among the bottom five? Who should you consider fading a second-straight year?

The NHL season is long. Over the course of 82 games, every team goes through ups and downs, and every team will spend time as the favorite and the underdog.

The 2018/19 season was especially unkind to five teams.

The Devils, Sabres, Kings, Oilers, and Golden Knights all finished in the bottom five when it came to Return on Investment (ROI), as calculated by SBD Sharp.

Worst Return on Investment for 2018/19 NHL Season

Odds from 29/09/19.

There are a few things that stand out. All of these teams are projected to see improvements in their total points this year, but the Kings have the most modest projection.

The Golden Knights stand out because they’re the only playoff team. We’ll get to why they’re so far down on the list, but first, we’ll start with the team that picked first overall at the 2019 NHL Draft.

New Jersey Devils

After November 6, the Devils never broke even again.

The off-season brought a lot of change, in hopes of reversing that trend. First overall pick Jack Hughes will certainly help. So will PK Subban and a healthy Taylor Hall.

They’ll also need Cory Schneider to reverse this troubling three-year down turn:

Assuming Schneider recovers, or MacKenzie Blackwood’s 23 game audition is for real, there’s hope.

Using the Buffalo Sabres as our example, Buffalo picked first overall in 2018, selecting Rasmus Dahlin. In October, they were underdogs in nine of 12 games. They had positive results against the moneyline all the way into February before crashing out.

The 2020 World Championship is in Switzerland. Nico is their star player, but the potential of #NJDevils in the playoffs could make Hischier unavailable to play for his home country in his home country:

"All I can say at the moment is that my priority is the New Jersey Devils."

— Amanda Stein (@amandacstein) August 5, 2019

The biggest rise we saw in them, was late November. Their peak value was $1,103.

So if you’re looking for value on the New Jersey Devils this season, tune in early and often. They should play a lot of games as underdogs, and have winnable games against the Rangers, Flyers, Oilers and Coyotes in the first two months.

Buffalo Sabres

We talked about the Sabres’ patterns above. To recap: they started hot, reaching a value of $1,103. They fell out of the green (and playoff contention), bottoming out at $-1,422 before rebounding slightly.

Buffalo upgraded their blueline with Colin Miller, but Rasmus Ristolainen wants out. The offense has a lot of interesting pieces on paper, and is still fairly young.

Getting ready to board a red eye flight to St. Louis. I’m bored so here’s a late-night stat:

Malcolm Subban has more shutouts this season than-

– Henrik Lundqvist
– Jimmy Howard
– Carter Hutton
– Luis Domingue
– James Reimer
– Carter Hart#VegasBorn

— Jesse Granger (@JesseGranger_) March 25, 2019

But there’s the questions in goal. Linus Ullmark has run hot-and-cold in his career. If he can play well enough to split duties with Carter Hutton that’s the best-case scenario.

The Sabres won’t see much action as favorites, but they should be better than their 13-12 mark last season. After that, keep a close eye on them as underdogs; they’re closer to a middle-of-the-pack team than a bottom feeder.

Vegas Golden Knights

The Golden Knights spent the majority of their season as favorites after coming off of a 51-win debut season. The 2017/18 Western Conference champions ended up going 43-32-7, losing in the first round.

They spent just under a third of last season as an underdog, and the results weren’t flattering. Their -46.04% ROI was last in the NHL. As a favorite, they were the 12th-best team.

There weren’t many major changes in Vegas, so it’s likely we’ll see them as a favorite more than an underdog. Especially in a Pacific Division that features a very soft bottom tier.

But in the rare event the Golden Knights are an underdog? We’d recommend staying away. They were 3-6 in division games as a dog, and 4-17 in games against teams that finished with more points.

Los Angeles Kings

The Kings were victims of their past.

A perennial contender going into last season,  the Kings were favored 16 times. 13 came before January 11.

In total, they ended up 6-10 with the worst ROI as a favorite. That one road game they were favored in? It was against the Senators.

The Golden Knights are peppering the net but 2012 Jonathan Quick has stopped all 32 shots. Kings up 2-0 after two

— Justin Emerson (@J15Emerson) September 28, 2019

We’d like to say that the Kings will offer underdog value this year, but it’s a hard sell. LA has one of the oldest rosters in the league. Their blueline has gotten younger, but Dustin Brown, Jeff Carter, Anze Kopitar, Ilya Kovalchuk, and Trevor Lewis are all over 30. That’s a significant portion of their forward group.

The Kings will be underdogs a lot again, and rightly so.

Edmonton Oilers

Oh the Oilers. What do we do with them?

The one thing they shared in common with the Knights, Devils and Sabres was an anemic record as an underdog. They had the fourth-worst record at 19-32, netting a total loss of -$756 with a -14.82% ROI.

And it’s really hard to see that changing this season.

The roster is top heavy with Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. After that? There isn’t much. And as we talked about elsewhere, they’re trying their annual separation of McDavid and Draisaitl.

Carter Hutton was tied with Mikko Koskinen as the worst starting goalie in the league in that Athletic article…

— Joe Marino (@JoeMarinoTCB) September 25, 2019

In net they’re married to a guy we don’t know a lot about in Mikko Koskinen, and Mike Smith.

They simply don’t have the depth to earn favorite status, or pull off the upset when they’re underdogs.

It’ll be another long year in Alberta.