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Feb 29, 2024, 11:00 AM ET
There’s an idiosyncratic beauty to awards betting in sports: While almost all sports betting odds derive their lines from tangible statistics during the course of play and can be mostly boiled down to algorithms of probability, individual awards odds introduce a level of subjectivity, as these results are not tied specifically to stats, but rather to the voting preferences of sports media members.
The race to win the 2023-24 Hart Memorial Trophy exemplifies this idea perfectly, with four legitimate candidates each presenting a case that only has partially to do with their performance on the ice.
“It’s unique in how you book them and what you have to pay attention to,” Caesars Sportsbook assistant director of trading Adam Pullen tells ESPN. “A lot of influence can be done off the ice and not just on the ice when it comes to drawing action. If somebody gets on TV and starts talking about, ‘David Pastrnak deserves MVP consideration, blah, blah, blah,’ bets will come in. People react to that, but that’s just the uniqueness of booking awards markets.”
Pastrnak generally has the narrative — a top scorer in the league on a team atop the standings — to support an NHL MVP candidacy, and yet finds himself as a longshot at 75-1, per ESPN Bet odds.
Instead, the players currently most likely to win the Hart this season by the odds are Auston Matthews (+175), Nathan MacKinnon (+250), Nikita Kucherov (+275) and Connor McDavid (+400). Each candidate’s narrative has twisted and turned throughout the season, with their respective odds following suit.
The most turbulent odds belong to the current favorite. After opening the season at 12-1, Matthews didn’t move the betting needle much at first, with his odds lengthening to as far as 14-1 at ESPN Bet. That all changed when he scored two consecutive hat tricks on Feb. 15 and 17, following it up with four more goals over his next three contests.
The 26-year-old’s odds quickly jumped down into the triple digits and…
Source link : https://www.espn.com/espn/betting/story/_/id/39623433/nhl-betting-hart-trophy-odds-auston-matthews-nathan-mackinnon
Author : Doug Greenberg
Publish date : 2024-02-29 15:50:56
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