Tonight I found myself perusing the internet looking for any kind of NHL lockout bets I could make. Anything from if there will be an NHL season, to which leagues various NHL players will end up in. I couldn’t find anything lockout related, but I did stumble across an interesting prop bet on the 2014 Olympic Games. Sports Interaction currently has a prop bet up asking if Canada will defend it’s 2012 Olympic Men’s Hockey Gold at the upcoming Winter Olympics in 2 years time. Here are the odds:
Canada Will Win Gold in 2014 (-118)
Canada Will Not Win Gold in 2014 (-105)
There are a few things I noticed about this bet that surprised me.
First of all Canada will not have -118 odds heading into the tournament. Canada had +110 odds heading into the Vancouver Olympics and I expect similar odds for them heading into this one. Canada will be the best team on paper, but with so many other formidable opponents (Russia, Sweden, USA, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia) who have the ability to defeat Canada in one game it is hard to say that Canada will win the Gold medal more times than not. Look at the odds heading into this years World Championships. Canada has +450 odds, after that of Russia (+200) and Sweden (+250). It’s true that Canadian players don’t take the World Championships as seriously as those of other countries, but those odds go to show that Canada isn’t that far ahead of the rest of the world. In the 4 years with NHL participation, Canada has won 2 times, but both other years the Canadians weren’t even able to get a medal, which shows that there are a few teams capable of defeating them at this level.
The next thing I noticed is that your money will be locked up for almost 2 years until the Gold Medal winner at the 2014 Olympics is crowned. When you look at the time value of money, this is not a smart investment even if you are sure Canada will or will not win the Gold Medal. So after thinking about the bet in terms of Canada’s chance at winning this medal I ended up just realizing that making this bet at all would be negative expected value.
As you can see I have very little to write about with the NHL Lockout taking place. Instead I’ve been looking up sports betting tips to try to apply them to other sports while the NHL is out of commission. So far I’ve been doing alright with NFL, let’s hope that continues.
Written by: Niko de Jonge
Tagged with: 2014 Olympics • Canada • Gold Medal