Edmonton‘s odds moved from +1200 to +900 in two weeks, and only one other team in the league climbed that far.
It is important, however, to note that Florida, Colorado, and Carolina are still ahead of the Edmonton Oilers, and nothing that’s happened this summer changes that. That said, the betting market shows a positive opinion of what Edmonton did, the same way it liked what Washington did when the Capitals went from +1800 to +1200 after Ovechkin decided to come back and the team added Tuch, Kyrou, and Jenner around him. That one’s easy to explain. Edmonton’s not so much.
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The Oilers didn’t sign anybody that particularly amazing. They hired Mike Babcock, regardless of the controversies surrounding his name, because they believed he was the guy to hold everyone accountable. McDavid reportedly wanted him anyway. Two Cup Final losses and a first-round exit will do that to a captain. Darnell Nurse went to San Jose. Shakir Mukhamadullin and Ryan Shea came the other way. Fredrik Andersen showed up in net, straight off a Stanley Cup win in Carolina.
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While this is all great, none of it seems like a splash on its own. Together, it moved the Oilers down by 300 points, tying Washington for the biggest swing on the board.
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Colorado barely had to lift a finger to go from +750 to +700, and the Avalanche were already close to the top of the board before the offseason started. That’s a team the market trusts on reputation and roster continuity alone, not on anything it did this July.
Vegas is the one that doesn’t fit a simple explanation. The Golden Knights lost their leading goal scorer this summer. Pavel Dorofeyev signed in New York for $11 million a year, and Vegas is short a real weapon in its top six and on the power play because of it. Their odds still improved, from +1200 to +1000. This is probably because of everything else still on the roster: Eichel, Marner, Stone, Hertl, a defence that mostly stayed together, and a coaching change under Ryan Craig that hasn’t really been tested yet. Losing Dorofeyev hurt, but clearly not enough.
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The rest of the Pacific is still as messy as it was last season. Anaheim didn’t move, stuck at +2500. San Jose went from +4000 to +3500. Los Angeles actually got worse from +2500 to +3000. Maybe that’s the Ducks and Sharks separating from the Kings or the Kings sliding on their own. There’s no real way for the betting market to distinguish between the two, and neither should anyone try to read too much into a few weeks of trades and signings.
Outside the West, Ottawa went from +2500 to +3500 after trading captain Brady Tkachuk to Florida and bringing back William Eklund from San Jose to fill the void, using Florida’s 9th-overall pick. Trading your captain, especially a Tkachuk brother, gets read as a step back regardless of what comes the other way. Eklund’s talented. He’s not Tkachuk.
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The Montreal Canadiens went from +1800 to +2500, not because of anything they did wrong, but because of what they didn’t do. Ivan Demidov and Jakub Dobes got extensions, which is fine, but Montreal came into the summer looking to add and left it mostly standing still.
None of these swings mean much in isolation. Add them up, though, and they sketch a rough shape of how sportsbooks are reading the league three weeks after the draft: Edmonton and Washington trending up on the strength of specific, explainable moves, Colorado untouched at the top, Vegas absorbing a real loss without losing its footing, and the rest of the league sorting itself out in smaller, messier ways that won’t make sense until training camp settles things further.
