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Posted at 11:00 AM EST. Odds subject to change.

Edmonton over Florida

NHL Finals - Game 2

Edmonton -½ +175 over Florida

8:00 PM EST. Regulation only. Wayne Gretzky was born in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, which has a population of just over 100,000 people. The state of Florida has a population of over 22 million people. You could bet your mortgage that more people in Brantford, Ontario will be watching this game than in the entire state of Florida. Nobody gives a f**k about hockey in Florida or Arizona, or Nashville, or Utah or Anaheim. It’s 90 degrees and sunny in Sunrise. Here is the front page of the Miami Sentinel on Sunday, the morning after the Panthers took Game 1 in their quest to win their first Stanley Cup. 

Meanwhile, if the Florida Gators won its opening game of the season, there would be 9 pages of coverage. You can see in the bottom right corner a tiny article about the Panthers.

While all this has nothing to do with tonight’s game, it is a narrative on public perception that Florida won the opener and they won it by a convincing three-goal margin. 

Here is another article from another newspaper in Florida, the Miami Herald, and it, too, was not on the first page of the sports section:

What we find interesting is the headline, “Panthers played ‘well enough to win’ Game 1 of Cup Final. If you watched Game 1 on a Saturday night in June, then you know the Panthers did not play well enough to win. Truth is, they looked like the California Golden Seals in 1976 playing the Montreal Canadiens. Florida was dominated to an embarrassing degree but won 3-0. The time of possession during five-on-five play was massively in Edmonton’s favor but that’s hockey, the most luck-driven outcome sport that you can bet on. No sport sees teams getting dominated and winning like we see in the NHL on a daily basis. Florida scored on their first shot on net and then scored again on their third shot. It was one of the luckiest wins of the year by any team and while we absolutely acknowledge that the Panthers are a great team that will surely be better tonight, we will also acknowledge the Oilers have to be feeling pretty damn good about the way they played. They ran into a hot and very lucky goaltender that should not be trusted to repeat that performance here in Game 2. 

In what has to be considered a 50/50 proposition, we must stick with it and come right back on the Oil tonight to win in regulation because the price to do so is so sweet. Of course Edmonton can win Game 2 and of course Sergei Bobrovsky could get yanked after allowing five goals. Play the value. 

Sherwood

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