 This is covering the spread. Here are your hosts, Jim Sonnis and Dr. Ed Feng. What is going on, everybody? Welcome on into covering the spread. That's right here on the FanDual Podcast networking at numberfire.com. Where today, we're talking about the Stanley Cup Playoffs. Dom LeShijun is gonna swing by, break down the nuts and bolts behind his betting model for the NHL, talking about the current round one series, some of the series prices there, and also some games on Wednesday night. My name is Jim Sonnis. I am a senior writer and analyst for numberfire.com. Joined here as always by Dr. Ed Feng. You can find his work over at thepowerrank.com. And Ed, can we call you a golf sharp now after you're John Ron, top 10 bet? Is that okay if I label you as such? I'm just a guy that has sharp numbers from Colin Davey. My knowledge of golf is still pale compared to too many out there. Although it was actually really amusing watching the last round of the PGA this weekend and having to explain to people that don't follow numbers that John Rom is a good golfer. Yeah, that was a very interesting conversation. Yeah, and I feel like that's true for a lot of golfers where you have to be like, no, no, no, this is actually, he's really good at this. Yeah, just because he hasn't won a tournament in a while doesn't mean he's not good. Right, it's same thing with like, again, we talked about Tony Fino with Colin last week where like, he's a tremendous golfer. Doesn't win that much. That's fine. You don't have to win to be a great golfer. Like Denny Hamlin has not won a NASCAR race this year. Tremendous NASCAR racer, best driver in the sport right now. Like, wins are overrated in a place where, Ed, we're trying to win bets. I am saying wins are overrated, but I think that we do overvalue them at times and we undersell the variance that goes into finishing in one precise position. So, you know, and that's why you gave yourself a leeway with the John Rom Top 10 versus an outright. So, hey, it all factors it. Yeah, no, exactly. And if we could get the guy to play, take, you know, the first three rounds of a major seriously, you know, maybe we can get that some top five or even, even outright. Absolutely. Now you're wearing a U.S. soccer kit, is it, do I call it a kit? I am, Yeah, that's good enough. I'm totally out on like soccer stuff. Is there anything like big, is there a reason why you are wearing the kit for today? Yeah, well, I'm wearing the kit because I like it and because the U.S. plays on Sunday, getting back into some big time summer competition. And remember our last conversation about how there's a lot of young promise on this team, there's a lot of excitement for U.S. fans. So that's one thing. But the other thing I wanted to talk about is that I used fbref.com to update my world soccer rankings and they definitely needed an adjustment. And like it literally almost made me cry how easy it was to do it based on just the simple CSV files that you can just download from their site and just one fell swoop. You get all the friendlies from 2020 and then also some from 2021 this year, all the important Euro matches. And I don't think I wouldn't, I don't know, I probably would have figured it out eventually, but I learned about fb rough because of one of our guests on the show last year. So I'm like beyond a static that that site is making it pretty easy for me to update my international soccer rankings. I mean, I used to have scrapers that did it all and it was all automated and they broke as scrapers tend to do over the years. So yeah, anyways, you can check out at thepowerrank.com, you can check out my international soccer numbers. I will be talking about them on this show as Euro comes up pretty soon. Brazil is the top ranked team, but the next 10 teams are from Europe. And that's why Euro is always competitive and it's always exciting and absolutely, I mean, it's arguably better than the World Cup because of the parody of all those teams. I'm glad that your experience with the reference side has been good because our racing reference is changing their format and it hasn't messed up my spreadsheets yet. It is very close to doing so. And I am like every time I open racing reference, I get nervous that they're gonna jack something around, it's gonna totally throw off everything. It would be very, it'd be an easy fix, but like I am nervous that they're gonna change one thing that's gonna throw everything off. Cause right now I can boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, boop, cut pace, two things, it's really easy, super easy to do. But like, if they were to change one thing, it forced me to redo a lot of stuff. And I really would like to avoid that issue if we can possibly do so. Yeah, exactly. I mean, you're gonna have to fix it eventually, but you always wanna put those off. And, you know, I mean, I used to just scrapepifa.com and then I actually, I hired someone to scrape some stuff from ESPN, but that was like a huge mess transferring it and all that stuff and now it's just there. So it's fantastic. Let's hope this is a problem for future Ed and future Jim. Current Ed and current Jim do not need the headaches. So let's hope it's a problem down the line versus right now. As mentioned, we're talking to Dom, Lucician of the Athletic, get his thoughts on the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs, talking about his betting model. It's a player-based model. We've talked to Rob Pazzola about his as well, similar stuff, but also Dom has a unique spin on us. We'll talk to him about that. Get his thoughts on the Stanley Cup playoffs, some series odds, some games going on, Wednesday night as well. You can follow Dom on Twitter at DomLucician and check him out over at the Athletic as well. Also a quick reminder to make sure you are subscribed to covering the spread. Wherever you get your podcast, weekly podcast year during the NFL and college football season, we are up usually on Wednesdays, on covering the spread, the podcast feed there. Just search for covering the spread, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, StitcherRadio.com. No matter where you get your podcasts, you can find us and while you're there, if you like what you hear, leave us a rating and review as well. Now we'll get to Dom in just a bit, but first we got to go back to last week. We did have Colin Davion. Talk about the PGA championship. We'll go back through that and then talk about the Stanley Cup playoffs. Covering the past. Last week, as mentioned, we had Colin Davion to preview the PGA championship. You can find Colin on Twitter at ADJ Baseline. For Outrights, Colin was big into Xander Schoffelay, wanted him outright at 20 to one. Xander was good off the tee and he putted well, but had a lot of issues around the green. He lost 3.4 strokes there across two rounds and that forced him to miss the cup, which is weird because Schoffelay is good around the green, just a rough week for him there and a lot of big names missed the cut, so no sweat there. Tough break for Colin with Xander, but did make it back with Bryson DeChambeau at minus 102 over Rory McElroy. That one he did hit correctly. Both guys made the cuts. Bryson beat Rory by two strokes. He's 38th. Rory was I think 46th there. So that's a win for Colin at minus 102. Then it was mentioned before, Ed had John Rom to finish top 10 at plus 160 and Ed, you had that one perfectly. Rom finished a tie for eighth. He had an all around great week of golf. I know you mentioned that, you know, didn't come out hot, but like look at the overall numbers. Really well rounded for Rom. He gained at least 1.6 strokes in each of these strokes game categories. So winner for you at plus 160 in a good week overall. So Ed, are you just slowly becoming our golf guy? Like, can we just like, you don't even need to come up a guest. What's that? That, remember, I don't remember my own numbers. Everything I do is based on other people's numbers, but yeah, I think you're making the Rom thing feel easier than it was. Well, but like, I don't think that was in play until, I mean, I don't think he actually snuck into the top 10 until he was in the clubhouse on Sunday. Right, but would you rather trust a sample of 54 holes or 72? It's like the Ken Palm discussion. It's like the Ken Palm discussion where like, sure a game may have been close at halftime, but it's a blow up by the end of the second half, then it's a blow out. It doesn't matter what happened in the first half. Rom struggled the first three rounds, but by the end of the full sample we got, he was top 10 and like, his overall numbers were very good. No, no, for sure. But it, you know, I mean, watching it live, like I actually thought that I'd lost at points on Sunday, so, but you know, I mean, just with the conditions out there and the wind and all that stuff, like, you know, guys were dropping shots here and there and all that too. Xander only missed a cup by like one stroke, I think, so. Yeah, he was on the number, I'm pretty sure. He played well. He just had like those issues around the green and like, DJ missed the cut. I think there were a couple other big names. Rory almost missed by a stroke. Justin Thomas missed it. Like, that's a big name. So there were some major dudes who missed the cut. It was a tough course, makes sense. And maybe that means we can get better value on Xander going forward. That would make Brandon happy. It would make Colin happy as well. So if that's the overall takeaway from this, I'm sure they'll be happy. But hey, you've got some money in your pocket so you can shovel that towards Xander down the line. How about that? Oh yeah, wow. I mean, I'm for sure betting Xander in future tournaments, right? Like, undoubtedly. So it was actually kind of interesting. Like, I came home and I told my wife, oh, a 50-year-old won the PGA Tour. The PGA Championship this week. She's like, oh, yeah, that's interesting. And then her mom calls her later, she's like, you know, Phil Milkelson won. And won the tournament. And she was like, why didn't you tell me Phil won? I was like, why do I think you know who Phil Milkelson is? We've had that discussion before. Why do I think you know who the second biggest golfer in the world was back when we were kids, right? Like, because I asked her, do you know who Mario Lemieux is? And she's like, who? I was like, that's kind of the same thing, right? Right, right. I've had that same discussion because I have no, I have no context what other people know or don't know. I'm terrible at gauging that. Like, just like my wife has watched Bless Her Soul. So many NASCAR races with me that I like, I clarified who Kurt Busch was and the Bush Brothers. She's like, you could just say the Bush Brothers. I'm like, oh yeah. I mean, they're 40 years old at this point. So like, I can just say that. And like, I have no frame of reference. I'm terrible at judging that. So I feel your pain there. Like, I'm really bad with those things. Yeah, so I thought that was interesting. And you know, obviously a storyline that we hadn't talked about yet was the 50-year-old winning a major, you know, the oldest player. And that was pretty cool to see, right? I mean, you just kept watching on Sunday, waiting for him to fail and it just wasn't happening. Yeah. And it was fun to watch him head-to-head with Brooks. I know like, sometimes that storyline got a little bit overplayed, but like Phil launch and drives. And Brooks Kepka is like an intimidating dude. And that's like a compliment to him, good for him. But like, to go head-to-head with Brooks on a Sunday, I thought that was awesome. So Phil Mickelson, major winner at age 50. Really fun storyline there. We're gonna talk some NHL playoffs with Dom Lucigen of the Athletic in just one second. But first, the wait is finally over and the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs are underway. FanDuel is giving fans a special playoff promotion, correct score insurance. All you have to do is place a pre-live, 60-minute correct score wager on any featured NHL playoff game. If your bet loses, but your selected team wins the game, get a refund of up to $25 in site credit. Even if the game goes to overtime, you are eligible for a refund. Head over to FanDuel today and win alongside your favorite team in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Most be 21 plus and present in Colorado, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, or West Virginia. Refund issued as a non-lethropal site credit that expires in seven days. Max refund $25. Terms apply, gambling problem, call 1-800 Gambler. In Colorado, call 1-800-522-4700. In Iowa, 1-800 bets off. In Indiana, 1-800-9 with it. For Confidential Health, Michigan, call 1-800-270-7117. In Tennessee, call the red line at 1-800-889-9789, or in West Virginia, visit 1-800-gambler.net. Let's bring on Dom Listergen right now to talk about the NHL Stanley Cup playoffs. He is a reporter for The Athletic. We'll talk about his betting model, how to bet this postseason, whether he sees some value in any of the current series odds, and a little bit about Wednesday night's games as well. Covering the present. Let's bring Dom Listergen into covering the spread to talk some NHL. In the Stanley Cup playoffs, he is a betting reporter for The Athletic. And Dom, we appreciate the time. How are you doing today? Not too bad. It's a bit rainy in Toronto, so my hair is a little wet right now, but other than that. At least you have hair. Like, you know. We're not working with a whole lot here. You've got the best hair of this tree. I mean, Ed's is pretty good, but like you're sitting upper quartile, at least. I appreciate that. I usually looks better. Okay. Still beating us. So you got that going for you, but Dom, NHL playoffs, probably a pretty crazy time of year for you. How has it been trying to not only watch all the games, but also having additional time seemingly every night via overtime so far this year? I love overtime and I welcome any extra hockey, especially during the playoffs, because I think it's some of the best hockey you can watch. Honestly, I love the playoffs. Try to watch every game. I have two TVs in my living room, like set up, just so I can watch as much as possible and catch everything. And I live for this time of the year. I plop down on the couch at 7 p.m. and I do not leave until 2 a.m. when the games are over. That's all. That's incredible. What's your schedule like during the regular season? Do you have like a schedule? I mean, clearly it's kind of hard to watch every single game, but what's it like during the regular season? During the regular season, I try to watch as much as I can. There'll be some nights where like mid season where I'll just take a break and not watch anything that night. But because I'm betting on most of the games, I usually want to watch how that unfolds to the sort of ruining my mental health in that way. Watch some games that don't go your way, but it's pretty much the same thing, just maybe not as intense and not as frequent. So we talked to people who bet volume before, isn't like they, you know, a smaller unit sizes, but try to bet on a lot of games. Cause they feel like they've got an edge overall. They don't want to pick and choose the best spots. Are you of the same mold where you're trying to have action on a high number of games just because you feel like you have an overall edge on the market? Yeah, I'm big on volume. I feel like if I were to pick and choose, I would pick wrong. I trust myself enough to maybe pick right a lot of the time, but I think I trust my model more than I do. So I do tend to just go with what it says, even if sometimes I don't like it, cause hockey is just such a random chaotic sport that sometimes if it tells you to bet on a terrible team, it ends up working out. Yeah, and you wrote about your model. You gave an in-depth breakdown for the athletic last year and you said that it's a player-based model that revolves around game score similar to a metric used for basketball, but not used for hockey. So if you were to translate that to hockey terms, what is that? What is game score for you? And what brought you to making that the central focus of your NHL betting model? The basic gist, same in basketball and saying what I want to do in hockey is to create like a one-number stat that puts like all the box score stats we know and love into one succinct number. So after like every game, everyone's like, oh, this guy had a goal and assist. He had a couple of shots. His possession numbers were not that great though. Like how good was his game? That was the general idea of it. And I remember, I think it was the year LeBron won the championship with Cleveland and I was just soaking up any content I could and I stumbled across the staff for basketball, which I've never heard of. There should be something like this for hockey. So I did it myself. And at the time, I think my betting focused on teams and team strength. And I always felt that was a little wrong because there's a lot of injuries or a lot of lineup changes. I want to be as like up to date as possible with that. And if you think about a player getting injured for maybe like two months, how does that look when he comes back? How strong should the team look? How do you isolate that? And I think that was the way to go and I've had a lot of success since doing that. Yeah, that's excellent. And so that's awesome that you developed this own model yourself. Is it kind of related to expected goals or is it very different? It is related in the sense that it uses expected goals. I think the year that the Blues won the cup, they were really big on expected goals but not the best by Corsi and the old version of game score use Corsi because it was simpler and I needed to sort of adapt to that. So with the Blues, it was a bit of an eye-opening thing where I needed to adjust that portion of the model where I look at a player's play driving ability at five on five and sort of add that to how he produces those box score stats. So what was the process for you like when trying to decide whether to go with Corsi, stick with Corsi, what it had been or transition to expected goals? What process did you go through to make to decide to make that switch? It was a while ago but I'm pretty sure I tested both of them and which predicted future goals better and I think they were close enough that I could have went either way but I think just logically expected goals makes a lot of sense and the big thing for me was that it was a better way to isolate goalies because at the time I was having issues with saying that Devon Dubnick was one of the best goalies in the league just because he played for Minnesota and I was thinking what happens if Dubnick gets traded? How does that look when I put Dubnick on this new team? Will he improve that team as much as my model says he does and the answer is probably no because his stats are inflated. So I think that was the biggest reason I started using expected goals mostly for the goalies. Yeah, that's interesting. So you're just saying this goalie might have played in front of really good defense. You put him in front of a lot of good defense he's gonna get exposed. Exactly, and expected goals can control for that a bit better as opposed to what I was doing prior to that which is just using safe percentage. Now in the NBA, we talk a lot about in the playoffs how rotations tighten and stuff like that. It means you have to make an adjustment for NBA modeling. Seems like a player-based NHL model would be positioned pretty well to account for that in the NHL playoffs if there's something similar. So do we see shifts in ice time during the Stanley Cup playoffs and how do you have to adjust things for that on your end to make sure you're accounting for that change? Yeah, I do everything by using rate stats. So how much, how good a player is per minute. And then I use like maybe the last 10 or so games for to project as ice time. And in the playoffs, you do see that as well especially in games that go to overtime which has been a lot of games this post season. The Edmonton Winnipeg game for example, I think Ethan Bear and Slater Kuku had a bad shift and they just did not play for two over times. And you do need to account for that in some way. I think using recent ice time as the playoffs go through captures that effect to an extent where the top players are indeed playing a lot more. Do you ever think that a coach might just, you know, really change someone's ice time going into the next game and kind of hand put that into your model? It is possible, especially if there's a player who was on the fourth line and they decide to give him a promotion and put on the first line. That is something that does happen. It was not something I personally account for because there are times when a coach does that and then halfway through the game he changes his mind or he gives that player that ice time maybe five on five or even just a couple shifts with that top line and then puts the usual guy in that role. I think that that's, just because a coach does something for one time does not mean that will stick. And I think that's an important thing to account for too. We can't always assume what just happened will be predictive of what happens going forward. Now let's talk about some games. We have three games going on tonight. We're recording here on Wednesday. So let's talk briefly about those games. One of the teams playing is Tampa Bay and they've been high in their power rankings on the athletic. I know Rob was high on them too. We talked to him a couple, I think it was a month ago and they've had some trouble with the Panthers so far in this series. They've got game six tonight. Has what you've seen from them in this series altered your view of Tampa Bay at all or do you still think they're a big contender to push for the Stanley Cup this year? I think they're still a big contender. I think they're still the team to beat in the central as well. I would probably rate them higher than Carolina. But once you get to like the top teams I don't think there's much separation between them and Boston and Toronto and Vegas with Colorado still the team to beat. So if Vegas gets through, they still have to play Minnesota tonight but if Vegas gets through and gets by Colorado then I think the top four would be all pretty even. I don't think there's much separating them whereas I think a few months ago I would have had Tampa in that tier with Colorado. And over the last month of the season they sort of, their play started to slip a bit. Vasilotski wasn't as sharp. Headman was playing injured. I have liked Kutraw coming back. He has done big things for their power play and he's starting to pick things up at five on five again where he's a big factor there as well. But I think the issue with Florida is that they're a tough matchup for Tampa Bay all throughout the season series. They've been able to control play against them. And I think in a series against Carolina Tampa might fair a bit better especially with Kutraw back and close to 100%. But I don't think they're the team to beat by any means they are contender though. Would you say if they do face Carolina you might view Tampa Bay as being undervalued as an overreaction to what we saw in this series? It's possible. I haven't run the numbers on what their series would be especially because this year I've added like a matchup component. So I would want to see how Tampa Bay played against Carolina during the season series. But it'll be interesting to see how the books rate that series because I do feel like a lot of people tend to still rate Tampa Bay very highly especially because they won last year. So Dom, how does that matchup component work? I presume it's something like you're looking at just how Tampa Bay played Carolina during the season? Yeah, it's not even just how Tampa Bay played Carolina but how the players specifically played. So I use game score as well and I look at their game score in those games specifically. So if Brayden Point's average game score is one and against Carolina it's 1.1 then he played a little better and he gets a little boost from that. And I do that across the entire team and the same for the other side and that gives a little push in the right direction. So for this series, because Florida played Tampa Bay a bit better during the season series they got a bump. Edmonton versus Winnipeg, Edmonton was the better team so they got a bump as well. I think it's the same for Minnesota and Vegas where Minnesota for whatever reason outplayed Vegas during the entire season series and I think what's interesting is seeing whether that's manifested in the playoffs or not. In this Tampa Bay series, Florida has been the better team at 5-1-5 and I don't think they're quite out of it yet. Edmonton, every game they were the better team at 5-1-5 against Winnipeg and Minnesota, well it's been interesting. Some games they've been better, some games they've been shellacked by Vegas' shot volume but I think by XG it's a lot closer than the shot counts make it seem to. Let's talk about the wild. They're playing tonight. So we got the Penguins Islanders and Vegas, Minnesota going on tonight. Any value you see on the boards for those two games as of right now? Right now, I actually have a bet on all the games. I'm not sure if the Lions have moved too much since I bet them but I bet on Pittsburgh because I expect Oliver Wallström not to play and I think going to Travis Zajac is a bit of a downgrade. Minnesota, my model can't get enough of them. Apparently they will bet Minnesota almost every single time and I got, I would say a pretty good price at like plus 119 earlier this morning and I think it shifted down a bit. I am still like waiting to see if Max Patch ready plays but I have an edge regardless so I put a little bit down and then Tampa Bay, that's a tough one because Spencer Knight is starting and he's played all of like five games in his NHL career but based on what he's shown so far, I think Tampa Bay has a pretty good edge in that game and I liked their price. I have their price around like minus 145-ish so there's still an edge there of what it is now. Excellent. So after the last night, Maple Leafs are minus 3,500 to beat the Canadians and Carolina is minus 700 to take down Nashville in their respective series. Do you see any value in these series? I would say probably not. I don't think it's worth it to lay those prices, this late in the series, especially at that range like Toronto, you can probably just bet them to win and game five and call it a day. Carolina, Nashville, that series, it feels like the home team wins every game and I've had an edge on Nashville in most games and I think I bet Nashville before the series and Nashville plus one and a half so I don't know if I would stick with Carolina regardless, I'd probably play Nashville at home and then leave game seven alone. Now when we were talking about the Lightning earlier, you mentioned that the Avalanche have kind of pulled away and separated from the pack and that's reflected in the Stanley Cup odds right now. They're plus 270 at Vanderbilt Sports Book. The Bruins are five to one, Toronto plus 550, no one else shorter than that. Do you think there is value on Colorado at plus 270 or anybody else standing out or are you just staying away from this market right now? I bet Colorado before the playoffs started because I thought even at plus 450, it was still really short. I thought the first round was a freebie for them. I had them at like 88% to beat St. Louis and it was like one of the highest, it was the highest first round probability I've ever had and I just think they're head and shoulders above everyone else and that's also given them the highest cup probability I've ever had as well. I think I started at 37% which is way higher than what the market even currently has them at now where they've already won a round. So that's probably the only team I would bet on. I think there's still value and usually I don't say that about the number one favorite but I think Colorado's on such a high level right now. They have the highest expected goals percentage of any team since expected goals has been a thing and it's not just like by like 0.1 or 0.2, it was by like 3 percentage points. It was insane. So I don't think we've seen a five on five team like Colorado and I think the reason the market is maybe pricing them the way they are is the expectation that they have to get through Vegas and maybe the market viewing Vegas a little closer to Colorado than I do. I don't think Vegas is that close to them to be honest. We might have to be the official podcast of the Colorado Avalanche because Rob was on the Avalanche too so I'm glad to hear Smart Minds saying the same thing. Makes you feel good about Colorado right now. That is Dom Lushijin. Make sure you follow him on Twitter at Dom Lushijin. Check him out at theathletic.com as well. Check out his NHL work there. Dom, we appreciate the time. Thank you so much for swinging by and spreading your knowledge about your model. We appreciate it and good luck to you with your bets not just tonight, but also the remainder of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Yeah, thanks for having me. Covering the future. Big thank you once again to Dom Lushijin for swinging by and breaking down the NHL playoffs and talking about his betting model and Ed. We talked about expected goals in the open, talking about soccer, pops up here again with the NHL. Seems like innovations and analytics have made things a lot easier on people trying to make out their own models. Yeah, for sure. I mean, when I first started doing this, so 2008 I started thinking about sports analytics and even when you, I think I ran some NHL numbers and it was just goals, right? And then a couple years later, people trying to start to convince me that shots were more important than goals which is kind of counterintuitive yet. I mean true, right? In the sense that, you know, finishing is kind of random and the volume of shots actually is pretty predictive. But then, you know, whether you wanna debate about that or not, you know, things that move forward and now you have this notion of expected goals in soccer, hockey, and it just gives you a better sense for the quality of shot attempts and knowing that finishing can be a little bit random. And so, yeah, I think with the data they have in the NHL, that's really cool that they are doing that. And I'm sure, you know, where he's getting his expected goals things is a big part of that game score, as he mentioned. And, you know, expected goals, you know, be interesting, you know, thinking about Euro, like, you know, can you use like expected goals for the team in their respective domestic leagues to figure out what they should do at the international level? I don't know if that's true. I don't know if anyone's tried it, but obviously teamwork matters a lot too, right? So you take a guy like Robert Lewandowski, who's on Bayern Munich and great, and then he goes to his national team with Poland where he doesn't have the same type of support. So, yeah, all interesting things to think about and definitely where soccer and hockey are headed. And it actually does tie into golf, too, because we were talking before about how, you know, John Rom hasn't finished the job at a major or whatever and stuff like that, but, you know, the components to get there are there. It's kind of like expected goals. You could have expected wins and stuff like that for golf. We don't want to overvalue results when we want to, I mean, results matter, obviously. We don't want to overweight results and ignore the components that lead to good results in the future. And I think that both expected goals, a lot of the data from golf and like that, that all does interlink. And with NASCAR average running position, stuff like that, those all link up together to hopefully give us a better context behind the results, as opposed to just looking at the results on the surface. Yeah, well, I mean, golf's interesting, too, right? Because just the, you know, I mean, you're in a field with 100 golfers and the most emphasis put on one position, right? The win, whereas that's just, you know, even great golfers are not going to get wins over long periods of time. So, yeah, no, it's certainly the same idea as with the expected goals and just looking at the underlying process as opposed to just results. Well, we'll see how things go in the NHL for tonight and hopefully the avalanche can pull it out for both Tom and for Rob. Let's move now to covering the future for this week. And Ed, you're going to talk about something we discussed with Whalecapper when we did our NBA playoffs betting preview. He talked about home court because fans are back, at least partially, and there is an interesting dynamic there. You want to talk home court in general for the NBA playoffs or for the NBA, what are you seeing right now? Yeah, did Whale give us a number? Or did we just talk about it? I don't believe, I don't believe so, no. Oh, good, because if you gave us a number and I forgot about it, and then I'm going to tell you this, it would be a little embarrassing if that number were different from what he said on our show. But, so yeah, let's talk about home court advantage. Like, you know, you have a model, it's modeling teams on a neutral court. Like, what should you add for home court in the NBA? And it's really, you have to consider two different things. So first is that home court is bigger in the playoffs, traditionally, and I'll talk about that. And the second is that home court is going to be less this year because of fewer fans in the pandemic. So look, we're not going to be able to get an exact estimate by any stretch, but you know, let's do our best, right? So first, let's look at home court in the playoffs versus the regular season. So if you look at the last three full regular seasons, so throughout 2019-20, the three seasons before that, the average home court in the NBA was 2.66 points. Now, in the playoffs during those three seasons, the home court jumped to 4.11. So that's about a 50% increase. And I had to recheck this number. I used to use about 45% increase when I did NBA stuff back in the day. And so that's about the same, right? So you're basically getting about a 50% increase in the playoffs. So check, that's our first, that's the first thing we needed to know. And then the second thing is like, you know, how does the reduced crowd size affect the pandemic? So we know from a lot of work, like in the bookscore casting, that one of the reasons behind home court is the crowd effect on referees. And if you have fewer people in the crowd, you should have less of a home court advantage. So there were obviously reduced crowds during this current season 2020-21. Overall, home teams had about a one point advantage, but that doesn't really tell the full picture because some of them were without fans and some of them were with. So luckily you can just got download the data from basketball reference to split out games with a home, with some fans and games without. And so with fans, the home court has been about 2.2 points this year. It's 503 games. And that's actually kind of interesting because that's basically the same home court that the NBA had in 2019-2020 before the pandemic and those crowds were a lot bigger. So 2.2 points, like that kind of shows you, like it should have been bigger with those bigger crowds last season. So there's a lot of uncertainty in this, but essentially I think two points is a good assumption with partial fans in the crowd and every NBA team in the playoffs is gonna allow some fans in, are gonna allow some fans in the games during the playoffs. So if you take two points, you assume a 50% increase. This suggests that you should get about three points for home court in the NBA playoffs. And you can actually check this against the markets, right? So if there's no major injuries in a series, you should be able to look at what happens on one team's home court versus the other team's home court. The difference in that spread should be about twice home court advantage because you're taking away home court and then adding it to the other team. So for example, Miami was a five point favor against, excuse me, Milwaukee was a five point favor against Miami at home in game two. Now there are one point underdog in game three in Miami. It's exactly six points. Suggests that the home court should be three. You get the same thing in Denver. You actually don't get the same thing when you look at the Phoenix Lakers series. So, yeah. So the number wasn't quite three in that situation. So, but at least those two series in which pretty much the same person all playing in those games, you're looking at a home court of about three and that's what I'll be using going forward. Okay, so I like the process to use there. Finding out what it was previously, the increase for the playoffs and seeing that there. I'm guessing it'd be tough to look at home court in a vacuum during the playoffs because obviously the differential in the teams is such that, but like in the regular season, you can just look at scoring differential, correct? To determine home court. But during the playoffs, you can't do that, correct? I mean, you can. So, look, the best thing to do is to actually just take an even number of games in each series. Cause that way you don't get the weird effect of like a better team having an extra home court. I didn't actually do that in this analysis. So before when I used the factor 45% increase, like that, that analysis did take that into account. So, you know, getting that it's about the same with a more coarse analysis of just looking at all games. It should be fine. I mean, you're only, you know, I mean, if you have a really good team that's winning by a lot in game seven, that's going to kind of throw it off, but that hopefully is few and far between. Right, okay. So three points for home court and the NBA for the post season. Hopefully that helps if you are trying to build out your own NBA model. If you've been struggling with that, Ed Find three points and Will Kapper talked about similar effects for his stuff heading into the playoffs as well. For my cover in the future, I want to talk some NASCAR, the Coca-Cola 600 is this week. So pretty big race. I'm going to go back here to NASCAR and there are two bets I like. One is an outright and one is a top 10 bet. The outright is William Byron at 16 to one. I wanted to go with a non outright on Byron because he has been crazy consistent this year. He had a streak of 11 or 10 straight top 10s, finished 11th last week. So he's just insanely consistent, but he hasn't let a ton of laps. So that lowers his upside, increases the value in non outright. So I went into this thinking, okay, I'm going to get a Byron podium or a Byron top 10. The problem is sports books are aware of William Byron's ability to finish inside the top 10 and his numbers there are I think basically absurd. So if I wanted to find the best value on William Byron, it actually is via the outright. His implied odds of winning are 5.9%. I have met 7.3% in my simulations. That is the largest outright gap of anybody on the board right now, pre-practice on Friday. And that's even with my model dinging him for his lack of dominance. Like it accounts for the fact that he's not let a ton of laps in this package and stuff like that. It does ding him, but he has been good in this package this year. He has had a top 10 average running position in all four races at the one and a half mile tracks. He did win in Homestead. So it's not like he can't win. He just hasn't been converting top three and top four runs into wins as consistently as others have. So he did win at Homestead, a sixth place average running position in Las Vegas. So it's 16 to one. I'm willing to take Byron outright, although you can find a podium bet longer than four to one, which is where he is right now at Fandal Sportsbook. I'd be okay taking that as well. The top 10 bet is on Matty Benedetto. He's at plus 225 over at Fox bet to finish top 10. That's 31% implied. My simulations have him at 42%, which made me go back and double check my numbers. Cause that seemed like, you don't get 11 percentage points differential very often. I thought I was wrong, but I see no reason to change what I have. He ranks 11th in my model straight up before accounting for variance. That is his projected average running position ranks 11th there, finished fourth in Kansas. A similar tire wear ish to Charlotte, more similar, at least in Atlanta and Homestead. The other similar track with a lack of tire wear is Las Vegas and Benedetto was running well there before his team couldn't change a tire on his car late in the race. We ran like 90 laps on one tire. The other three were all fresh, had a baby at around for the final 30 laps. So he finished 16th despite those issues. But I think it's still viewed as being a positive race for him from my perspective. So it's a really big gap between my model and the implied odds. I would be inclined to go harder at Benedetto for top 10 than Byron for outright is my favorite bed of the week right now. But if you do want an outright, like if you're not finding good top 10 odds, or if your book is an offering top 10 odds, I would say William Byron is your guy. Now, Ed, you have the situations before where you, your model is showing like a crazy amount of like value on something you have to like double check yourself and make sure you're not totally off on something. Yeah, I mean, you always want to check and double check things. I think that usually depends on the market. Yeah. So like if you're off by three points in an NFL game, you should, you know, you should be concerned about that. I don't know what the NASCAR market is like, how much you trust it. I presume it's a little bit like golf where it's not, you know, you're not going to expect it to be as strong as football sides in the fall. So I think with NASCAR, I would be a little less likely to think that something's wrong with my model. Right. I guess is what I'm saying. The reason that I was so taken aback by it is because it's something we discussed with Colin last week where the aggregate implied odds in a top 10 market are going to be a lot higher than the aggregate odds in an outright market because like, if that makes sense, like they understand that if you're looking at a top 10 that on that D-Benedetto, it's because you don't want to bet the outright. I think, and I think that what they do is they jack that up where it's possible. What is the house gold? Is what you're saying? Yes, correct. Yeah, the house take, yeah. Right. So like the top 10 odds specifically, I've had trouble finding value there for that reason a lot of times. And so that's why I couldn't talk about Byron for our top 10 is because I think it was minus 167. I can't get there. But so to see D-Benedetto specifically so far off in that market specifically, that's what caught my eye. Like an outright, I'm okay being different from the market there. But like a top 10 specifically, given how high the hold is, that's what caught me off guard. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But hopefully D-Benedetto comes through. We can make it look like the model is smarter that it made me feel earlier this morning. That is all that we have for today here on Covering the Spread. Want to give a big thank you once again to Don Lucigen for swinging by and breaking down his NHL betting model. Check out his work over at The Athletic and check him out on Twitter at Don Lucigen. We'll tag him in our tweets over on Twitter as well. You want to find him via that instead. Ed, you mentioned your soccer numbers. What else is going on for you over at the Power Inc. this week? Yeah, so I've still been in the off season. I've been writing my email newsletter actually every week now. So that's been kind of cool. This week is going to be the home court thing that I just talked about. But hopefully I will come up with something interesting, if not even more interesting next week. I will say that I did the home court thing to in order to do a different calculation on series prices. And I haven't actually quite figured out if that series price stuff is significant enough to tell anyone about. But I did think the home court was interesting enough to kind of put that out there as its own piece. So definitely sign up for that at thepowerrank.com. Also, I just definitely want to plug the pot I did with Sarah Bailey from Los Angeles Rams. It's pretty awesome. It's gotten some pretty good feedback so far. And the first time I've had anyone who works in the NFL on the show. So yeah, she talks about the lifestyle of working in the NFL and things that she does and working with Sean McVeigh, which I thought was very cool. So yeah, check that out. There's a little clip of it on my Twitter feed. But yeah, that's one that I would hope you go check out on the football and analytics show. I think, I haven't heard it yet. I need to go back and listen to it. But I think the Rams specifically are just in there because they seem to think about things differently than other teams in a positive way because they were talking about, they didn't want to waste their scouts' time by sending them to the combine. I think it was in 2020 or 2019. So they are taking the extra steps to identify where their inefficiencies and spending and time allocation. So I think listening to what Sarah had to say there might be especially pertinent. Find that by searching for the football and analytics show. Check out Ed on Twitter at the Power Inc. I am at Jim Sonnis, J-I-M-S-A-M-N-E-S. Make sure you also follow the FanDuel Podcast Network at FanDuel Podcast. Big thank you to Calvin Theobald, our video producer for running the video side of things here today. Thank you, Cal, as always. And thank you to everyone for tuning in. Good luck with your NHL bets. Anything else for this weekend? If you're betting the Indy 500, the Coke 600, whatever it may be, we'll talk to you once again next week. This has been covering the spread right here on the FanDuel Podcast Network.