Doug GreenbergApr 17, 2026, 12:37 PM ET
The Colorado Avalanche will enter the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the clear favorites to win it all, but the betting public will be hoping that one of several fun long shots lifts the Cup instead.
The Avs are +300 to win the NHL's championship, seeking to be the first team to win the Presidents' Trophy and Stanley Cup in the same season since 2013. The Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning are next in the odds at +475 and +500, respectively, according to DraftKings lines.
"Analytics is really what's driving these numbers," Caesars Sportsbook lead hockey trader Karry Shreeve told ESPN.
He details that Colorado, Carolina and Tampa Bay are easily his book's highest-rated teams by the underlying metrics.
Shreeve holds true to those numbers even if they don't always match up with the final standings, as with the Lightning, or narratives of past playoff struggles, as with the Hurricanes. The Avalanche, meanwhile, are the highest-rated team, finished with the league's best record and have a championship pedigree, giving them the clear favorite status.
The team that's perhaps the biggest question mark from that perspective is the Vegas Golden Knights, who come in tied with the Dallas Stars for fourth on DraftKings' odds board at 10-1.
Shreeve says he is not bullish on the Golden Knights from a power ratings viewpoint, but concedes that they have momentum with new head coach John Tortorella leading the team to a 7-0-1 finish to the regular season, and that they'll have an easier path to the Western Conference Final when having to face the rest of the historically bad Pacific Division.
"For as much as maybe we don't like this [playoff] format, as a bookmaker, this format really helps us project much easier than NFL byes or the NBA one-through-eight," Shreeve said. "You can just kind of sketch out everybody's path to a degree, and that helps you create the odds."
As far as liability goes, there isn't a whole lot of concern for sportsbooks surrounding the favorites, as bettors have been much more keen on exciting underdogs at longer odds.
At the top of that list are the Buffalo Sabres, who ended a record 14-year playoff drought in style by winning the Atlantic Division. They enter the fray with 14-1 odds to hoist the Cup after entering the season around 150-1. Public bettors have naturally gravitated toward the scrappy underdogs all season, which created some peril for sportsbooks when they were hesitant to shorten Buffalo's future odds, according to usual protocol.
"Just because teams have a decent start, that doesn't really move the needle for us to move the odds that quickly," DraftKings Sportsbook director Johnny Avello told ESPN. "We're slow to lower those prices on those teams thinking that at some point they'd fizzle out. So that's why sometimes we get in a little bit of jeopardy on these teams because they start good and they hold their position throughout the year."
At BetMGM, Buffalo has the most tickets (15.8%) to win the Eastern Conference, but the book's largest liability in that market is the Montreal Canadiens, another underdog that holds a whopping 30.4% of the handle.
BetMGM also reports the Pittsburgh Penguins (25-1 at DraftKings) as its largest remaining liability in the Stanley Cup market, while Avello notes that their cross-state rival, the Philadelphia Flyers (70-1), are a "staple in the future book." The Ottawa Senators (13-1), Minnesota Wild (18-1) and Boston Bruins (55-1) have also received some attention, according to bookmakers.
