Oddsmaker’s analysis of new NHL betting season

Richard Gardner is an oddsmaker with Bodog.com.

The National Hockey League drops the puck on the 2009-10 NHL season on Thursday night, less than four months after the Pittsburgh Penguins upset the Detroit Red Wings in Game 7 of last season’s Stanley Cup Finals.

The Pens and Wings are the Yankees and Red Sox, in a sense, of the NHL world. That’s because Pittsburgh and Detroit are the two teams who generate the biggest handle here at Bodog on a nightly basis during the season.

It helps that they also are the two best teams in the league – both at 5/1 to win the Cup this year at Bodog – and were shown on national TV in the U.S. more than anyone else.

The Penguins have the face of the NHL in Sidney Crosby, and he’s probably the biggest star in all of Canada as well – thus drawing a lot of action north of the border in addition to America.

Detroit is stacked with Europeans (thus helping lure in an additional market of bettors) and is the preeminent franchise in the sport – they don’t call Detroit Hockeytown for nothing.

Because of the relatively short odds to win the Cup this season, NHL futures bettors are not jumping heavily on the Wings and Pens for 2009-10. Actually, many hockey bettors tend to wait until the season gets underway to get a better feel of how teams are going to look. This happens much more in hockey betting than in baseball or the NBA.

But we do see a few futures trends emerging thus far, with the Anaheim Ducks (15/1 on Bodog to win the Cup), Vancouver Canucks (14/1) and Philadelphia Flyers (14/1) being the three teams getting the most love.

The Flyers we expected, as Philly fans are excited over the acquisition of defenseman Chris Pronger this offseason. They seem to think the mammoth Pronger will be the key to finally getting past Crosby and the Pens in the playoffs – Pittsburgh has eliminated Philadelphia the past two postseasons.

Plus, the Flyers have a rising superstar in Jeff Carter, who had 46 goals last season. But the team is putting a lot of faith in goalie Ray Emery, who imploded in 2007-08 with the Senators the year after leading the team to the Cup finals. He played last season in the Kontinental Hockey League.

Vancouver has no such goalie problems, having signed Roberto Luongo to a long-term extension this offseason. Luongo set a franchise record with nine shutouts last year (2.34 goals-against average), leading the team to the West semifinals. Any time you have a goalie of that caliber, you have a chance in the NHL.

As for Anaheim, it is trying to retool on the fly. It dealt Pronger to save money and get younger. The Ducks have an up-and-coming star in Ryan Getzlaf, who had a career-high 91 points last year and was a beast in the playoffs as the Ducks upset the top-seeded Sharks and pushed the Red Wings to the limit in the conference semifinals.

But who will be the Ducks’ No. 1 goalie this year: Jonas Hiller, last year’s playoff star, or Jean-Sebastien Giguere, who led Anaheim to the Cup in 2007?

The 2008-09 season saw record TV ratings for the Penguins-Wings final, and we at Bodog saw an uptick in betting action on the Stanley Cup Finals compared to the previous year’s series.

We’ll have to wait and see if NHL betting is really on the rise or if it was just a one-year fluke with the league’s two glamor teams again in the spotlight.