Sportsbooks still favor Avs to win Stanley Cup

Despite all the transactions by other teams around the league, and in the Western Conference specifically, the Avalanche is still the favorite with most sportsbooks out there to win the Stanley Cup next season.

The top sportsbooks are out with their 2021 futures books, featuring the Stanley Cup odds on each and every NHL team. The Avs are the current favorites no matter which online betting site you check, by and large. Bovada recently had the Avs as their favorite, at +650. For those not fluent in sports betting, that means if you bet +100 on the Avs to win the Stanley Cup and they are successful, you’d get your $100 back plus another $650.

Over at BetOnline, they have had the Avs and current Cup champ Tampa Bay Lightning as +750 co-favorites. Betway puts the Avs atop the 2020-21 Stanley Cup heap with a betting line of +800. The betting site 888 Sport also likes the Avs as their +800 favorite. As well, 10Bet likes the Avalanche as their +750 favorite. The one dissenting voice among the bunch is British bookmaker William Hill. They see the Vegas Golden Knights as the favorite, at +750, with the Avs and Lightning at +800. Now, it might be hard to estimate which sentiment oozes to the forefront of the average Avs’ fans’s psyche. Are they more excited to see Colorado on top of the Stanley Cup future odds at so many sports, or does it give them a warm feeling inside to know that in all of the same sportsbooks, the hated Red Wings are rated 31st and last in this Stanley Cup betting market? Some sportsbooks peg the Wings as long as odds of +25000.

Track Record Is Good
Just how do these betting sites fare when it comes to picking winners? Well, a year ago after the Stanley Cup concluded with the St. Louis Blues winning Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final from the Boston Bruins, the Stanley Cup future books started to appear. The instant favorite to win the Cup in those early Cup betting lines was the Lightning. They were the +700 favorite across the board at the leading online betting sites.

Avs Have It All Going On
Were it not for a rash of injuries that deprived that Avs of goalies Philipp Grubauer and Pavel Francouz, captain Gabriel Landeskog, defensemen Conor Timmins and Erik Johnson and forwards Matt Calvert and Joonas Doniskoi, there could’ve been a long-overdue celebration underway in the Greater Denver area.

In truth, it might have just been delayed for a year. These oddsmakers could be on to something. If the hockey world learned anything from the 2020 postseason, it’s that Colorado center Nathan MacKinnon’s name belongs right there alongside Connor McDavid, Leon Draisaitil, Sidney Crosby Alex Ovechkin or any other player you might consider worthy of membership in the “great players playing today” category. MacKinnon finished with 25 points in 15 playoff games. The last player to put up that pace of digits in a single playoff year was a fellow named Wayne Gretzky. When you’re keeping company with the Great One in terms of productivity, you’re doing OK.

Rookie defenseman Cale Makar won the Calder Trophy, and he was the first defender to do so since Florida’s Aaron Ekblad in 2014-15. He’ll win a Norris Trophy at some point I bet. The Avs are flat-out loaded – and that was before landing Brandon Saad and Devon Toews from the trade market the last few days. Don’t be surprised if the Stanley Cup gets a Colorado Rocky Mountain high sooner rather than later.