01/23/2007 - Dallas, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The National Hockey League is primed to showcase some of its proven stars, as well as some emerging ones when the YoungStars Game and SuperSkills challenge return Tuesday night at AmericanAirlines Center.
This will be the first time both of these competitions have taken place in three years since the 2004 All-Star Game in St. Paul, Minnesota. After the lockout wiped out the entire 2004-05 campaign, All-Star festivities were once again put on hold last year so players could represent their countries in the 2006 Winter Olympics.
The YoungStars Game will begin Tuesday's festivities at 7:30 p.m. (et) and will be followed by the SuperSkills event.
The Eastern Conference will try to defend its title in the SuperSkills competition, which consists of six events. The night will feature: Puck Control Relay, Fastest Skater, Hardest Shot, Accuracy Shooting, In the Zone, and Shootout.
The Puck Control Relay features a three-man team race as well as an individual competition. The Western Conference won the relay in 2004 and Rick Nash of Columbus took the individual event. Nash will be back to defend his title this year.
Scott Niedermayer of Anaheim will try to defend his Faster Skater title. Niedermayer also won the event in 1998, when he was still a member of the New Jersey Devils.
The Hardest Shot contest is synonymous with seven-time winner Al MacInnis, but the defenseman's retirement leaves an opening for a new slapshot artist to emerge. Adrian Aucoin won it in 2004 as a member of the New York Islanders, but the now Chicago Blackhawk blueliner did not make the All-Star Game this year.
MacInnis may have had the hardest slapshot over the course of the 1990s, but Ray Bourque was the decade's most precise shooter. Bourque won the Accuracy Shooting contest eight times, and twice broke four targets on four shots. Jeremy Roenick won the last two competitions as a member of Philadelphia, but the current Phoenix Coyotes forward was not named to the All-Star Game this year.
In the Zone and Shootout are team events, but the goaltender that allows the fewest amount of goals in these competitions will pick up an award. Roberto Luongo won the award as a member of the Florida Panthers in 2004, and will be back to defend his crown Tuesday as a Vancouver Canuck.
One point is awarded to the winning squad of each event and one is given to the Conference of individual winners. If there is a tie between squads after all six events, the winner shall be determined by a penalty shot competition.
The fourth edition of the YoungStars Game will not feature Pittsburgh's Sidney Crosby or Washington's Alexander Ovechkin, who are both in Wednesday's All- Star Game proper, but there is still plenty of talent to cover their absence.
Even with the 19-year-old Crosby in the All-Star Game, his Penguins are still leading the way with three representatives in the YoungStars Game. Forward Evgeni Malkin, who leads all NHL rookies with 52 points (24 goals, 28 assists) is the biggest star in the game.
Malkin will be joined on YoungStars East by Pittsburgh teammates Jordan Staal, a forward, and defenseman Ryan Whitney. All three players were selected in the top-five of the NHL draft.
Also, on the East team is Boston forward Phil Kessel, who missed a month of this season while undergoing treatment for testicular cancer. The fifth overall pick in the 2006 draft has seven goals and five assists in 33 games this year.
Atlanta's Kari Lehtonen will be in goal for YoungStars East, Mike Green and Andrej Meszaros of Ottawa will join Whitney on the blue line. Ottawa's Patrick Eaves, Zach Parise of New Jersey, Toronto's Alex Steen and Buffalo's Thomas Vanek are the remaining forwards for the East.
While the 20-year-old Russian Malkin is the star of his conference, Los Angeles Kings center Anze Kopitar, the first Slovenian player in NHL history, should lead the way for the West.
Kopitar, the 11th overall pick in the 2005 draft, is not yet as well known as Malkin, but has been nearly as prolific this season. The 19-year-old is second among NHL rookies in points with 42 (13 goals, 29 assists).
Colorado forward Wojtek Wolski will try to help Kopitar shoulder the scoring load for the West. The 21st overall selection in 2004, Wolski is fourth among NHL rookies with 32 points (16 g, 16 a). He will be joined on YoungStars West by Colorado goaltender Peter Budaj.
Unlike first-round picks Kopitar and Wolski, left wing Jussi Jokinen of Dallas wasn't picked until the sixth round of the 2001 draft. He still broke onto the scene in 2005-06 with 55 points for the Stars. This year, Jokinen has nine goals and 14 assists.
The West team's four defensemen will be Brent Seabrook of Chicago, Matthew Carle of San Jose, Ladislav Smid of Edmonton and Nashville's Shea Webber. Nashville will also send Alexander Radulov to the game as a forward.
Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf and Lee Stempniak of St. Louis are the remaining forwards for the West.
The game is played in a four-on-four format and is usually a fast-paced, high- scoring affair. In fact, the lowest combined goal output came in the last edition in 2004, when the West posted a 7-3 victory.
The YoungStars Game will also feature three 10-minute running-clock periods with 15-second stops after goals and four-minute breaks between periods. If the score is tied after three periods, a sudden-death shootout will determine the winner.
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South Bend, IN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Notre Dame has reportedly dismissed guard
Kyle McAlarney from its men's basketball team and the school.
The South Bend Tribune reported on Tuesday, citing sources close to the team,
that McAlarney was d
<< Mavericks are racking up the wins
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The defending Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks
are an impressive 34-8 and own a 4 1/2 game lead over the second place San
Antonio Spurs in the Southwest Division.
The red-hot Mavericks go for their eigh
<< Stars activate G Smith from IR
Dallas, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Dallas Stars activated goaltender Mike Smith
from the injured reserve list on Tuesday.
Smith suffered a concussion on January 4 against the Oilers and sat out the
next six games. In 11 games with Dallas,
<< Brand having another solid season
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trail the division leading Phoenix Suns by 13 games in the Pacific.
Elton Brand has been a bright spot for LA. The Duke product leads the Clippers
in scoring (2
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London, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The English Premiership's Tottenham Spurs
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services of defender Ricardo Rocha, Tuesday.
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Lake Forest, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - A Cook County judge agreed on Tuesday to
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for Super Bowl XLI.
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London, England (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Striker Ashley Young moved six spots up in
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Saints stopped short, but it was one heck of a ride >>
(Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Forget about how the New Orleans Saints fell apart in the
fourth quarter of Sunday's NFC Championship game. Don't dwell on the countless
number of uncharacteristic mistakes Sean Payton's troops made over the course
of the day
Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.
“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.
“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).
Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.
Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.
The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.
Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game
Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.
Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.
Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”
To visit this internet sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your sports betting needs and World Series odds.
Is there such a thing as a trap game in the NFL?
I once asked that question to Pete Korner, who at the time was office manager and a senior linesmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants.
Korner almost ripped my head off. There is no such thing as a trap game, he loudly berated me. It’s a myth. The numbers are made using power ratings, he said.
There are trap games, though. They just might not be what you think. The perception is of a good team, say Philadelphia, laying a small number against New Orleans.
Using the highly-respected power ranking from The Gold Sheet, you’d find the Eagles with a power rating of 4 and the Saints at 8. When you factor the game being played in New Orleans, you could see why the line opened so short at less than a field goal.
For some, this makes it enticing to take the Eagles. That’s not a real trap game, though.
A real trap game, says professional gambler Dave Malinsky, is thinking you’re getting value betting a bad team, which brings us to the Oakland Raiders-Denver Broncos matchup.
The Raiders are +15 in this long-standing division rivalry. Denver is on a short week having dispatched Baltimore Monday. However, the Raiders haven’t covered the spread their last 10 games.
Many bettors don’t trust the Raiders to give a full effort. Few think much of Art Shell and his Oakland’s coaching staff.
So oddsmakers have to do something to make Oakland attractive if they hope to get equal action.
Now Malinsky is a value shopper. But he won’t touch the Raiders even getting more than two touchdowns.
“I try to eliminate the undisciplined, unfocused teams because they’re the ones most likely to suffer the bad beats,” he said.
Near the top of Malinsky’s list of stay-away teams is the Miami Dolphins, who have yet to cover a spread this season.
“Whatever you think of Nick Saban, you have to look at the penalties and turnovers,” Malinsky said.
It’s easy to point out the Dolphins failed to get the money this past week against New England because Olindo Mare missed a field goal and had another field goal blocked. But even though the Dolphins outgained the Patriots, 283-213, they committed eight penalties.
Bad teams not only cost themselves victories, but pointspread covers as well. The Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers are two more examples.
The Cardinals couldn’t have been in a better position this past Sunday, up 14-0 at home against a mediocre Kansas City Chiefs squad. But they couldn’t hold it. The Packers got a push against St. Louis, but also could have won losing by three when Brett Favre fumbled at the St. Louis 11-yard line with 44 seconds left.
“The Packers were in a position to beat Philadelphia, too,” Malinsky said. “But they couldn’t even cover double digits.
“These teams just make mistakes and it costs you … they always will look good from a value standpoint. They really will. But that’s the trap.”
Houston and Tennessee rank among the six-worst teams. Malinsky wouldn’t be afraid to take either of these teams, however, if the price were high enough.
The Texans are bad, Malinsky said, but they have some discipline. The Titans showed they could not only come up with an outstanding game plan, but execute it as well, losing by one to the Colts on the road as an 18 ?-point underdog this past Sunday.
“Jeff Fisher is a worker,” Malinsky said of the Titans coach. “I’m not sure how hard Art Shell wants to work when he gets out of bed.”
Fisher, though, could be out as Tennessee coach after this season. Is he still worth backing in the right spot, with the right price, as a lame duck coach?
“It’s in his nature to keep working hard and not worry about any possible lame duck status,” Malinsky said. “He’s coaching for his resume.”
Note: Monday night game will be picked Monday. Lines used are from football betting lines.
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