A Title Race With No Clear Favorite
Three teams sit at exactly +750 on the Stanley Cup board: Colorado, Carolina and Florida. That is unusual. Markets normally sort themselves out at the top and hand one team the crown of chalk, but here the pricing says the sportsbooks genuinely cannot separate the Avalanche, Hurricanes and Panthers. Edmonton is right behind at +950, Vegas at +1100, and then the board drops fast. Six teams carry a real price. Everybody else is a swing.
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The Favorites
Translate the numbers first. A plus price tells you what $100 of profit looks like, so +750 returns $750 in profit plus your $100 stake if the team lifts the Cup. Convert that to a probability and +750 is roughly an 11.8% chance. Edmonton at +950 is about 9.5%, Vegas at +1100 about 8.3%, Tampa Bay at +1300 about 7.1%, Minnesota at +1400 about 6.7%. Washington at +1600 and Dallas at +1700 land near 5.9% and 5.6%. In a 16-team playoff bracket, an 11.8% favorite is the market saying nobody is dominant. That matters, because when the top is flat, the mid-board gets squeezed and mistakes show up.
How Futures Betting Works
A futures bet is a season-long wager on an outcome that will not settle for months. You take a price today and your money sits until a champion is crowned. The tradeoff is that you get a much bigger number than you ever would in a playoff series, but you give up flexibility and you pay a heavier built-in commission. That commission is the vig, the margin the book bakes into every price. On a single game the book's margin might be four or five cents. On a futures board it is enormous.
Add up the implied chances of just the 16 teams listed above and you get roughly 100.4%, and that is before you price the other half of the league. Every percentage point over 100 is the house's cut. Which is exactly why the best number is not a nicety here, it is the whole game.
Notice that no single book owns this board. FanDuel has the best number on Colorado, Edmonton and Montreal. BetRivers has Carolina, Florida, Vegas, Tampa, Dallas, Toronto and Anaheim. BetMGM has Minnesota, Washington, New Jersey, Utah, Buffalo and Ottawa. Taking +2200 on Montreal at FanDuel instead of +2000 somewhere else is $200 of extra profit on a $100 ticket for the same opinion.
Where the Value Is
The cleanest mispricing on the board is Dallas at +1700 at BetRivers. The Stars are being priced behind both Minnesota at +1400 and Washington at +1600, which means the market is asking them to be a fringe contender rather than a top-six one. Here is what expected value looks like in dollars. At +1700 you need Dallas to win about 5.6% of the time to break even.
If your honest number on the Stars is 8%, a $100 ticket is worth roughly $44 in expected profit, because 8% of a $1,700 payout outruns the 92% of the time you lose a hundred. That is the entire exercise: pay less than the outcome is worth. Montreal at +2200 at FanDuel sits in the widest gap on the board, an 800-point canyon between the Canadiens and New Jersey at +3000, and gaps like that are where lazy pricing lives.
The Long Shots
Below +3000 the board compresses into a cluster: Utah, Buffalo and Toronto at +3300, Ottawa and Anaheim at +3500. Those are all roughly 2.8% to 2.9% implied, which is the market shrugging. The case for a ticket there is that a $100 stake returns $3,300 or $3,500 and the Cup is a four-round coin-flip tournament once you are in. The caution is real too. Five teams priced identically means the book is not differentiating, and when a book is not differentiating you are mostly paying vig for a lottery slip. Keep those stakes small and treat them as the dessert, not the meal.
The Bottom Line
With the top of the board stacked at +750 and nothing resembling a dominant favorite, the Desk's read is that the value sits one tier down. We like Dallas at +1700 at BetRivers as the best price-to-contention mismatch on the board, with Montreal +2200 at FanDuel as the longer swing for a smaller stake. Shop both, because on futures the number you accept is the difference between a good opinion and a profitable one. That is the read on this market; the Desk posts a documented free play most days, and it lands right below.
Stanley Cup Odds FAQ
What are the stanley cup odds?
Colorado Avalanche is the current favorite at +750, followed by Carolina Hurricanes at +750. This page lists every team's best price across US sportsbooks, updated daily.
Where can I get the best NHL futures odds?
This page shows the best available price for each team across regulated US sportsbooks. Futures prices vary a lot book to book, so the same team can pay meaningfully more at one book than another, always take the best number.
Are these NHL futures picks free?
Yes. This is a free Wise Guy Desk breakdown, our analysis, not Ross's official plays. Ross's documented plays are bet with real money and graded win or loss on the members board.
How do you read NHL futures odds?
A futures price converts to an implied probability: +500 implies about 17 percent, +1000 about 9 percent, +2500 about 4 percent. That is the chance the price bakes in for a team to win it all. Books add a heavy margin to futures, so the implied percentages across all teams add up to well over 100 - which is why the same team can pay meaningfully more at one book, and why the best-price column here matters.