Blues roll into Columbus

Hockey Betting Lines

02/14/2012 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The St. Louis Blues will try to extend their winning streak to a season-high five games when they visit the lowly Columbus Blue Jackets tonight at Nationwide Arena.

St. Louis is in the midst of its fifth four-game win streak of the 2011-12 campaign, but the club last won five in a row from Dec. 21-31 of last season. Ken Hitchcock's team has a 13-2-2 record in its last 17 games and has built a five-point edge over Nashville for the fourth seed in the Western Conference.

The Blues are also just three points in back of Detroit for first place in the Central Division, Western Conference and NHL. St. Louis enters today with two games in hand to use over the Red Wings.

Meanwhile, Columbus has been going through a nightmare of a season and is last in the NHL with 38 points -- 11 less than its closest competition in the league standings.

The Blues are 2-0 against Columbus this season, winning one at home and one on the road while recording eight goals over the two meetings. St. Louis has taken five straight in the series overall and three in a row at Nationwide Arena.

St. Louis last played on Sunday, when it rode goaltender Jaroslav Halak to a 3-0 victory over the visiting San Jose Sharks. Halak made 25 saves to record his sixth shutout of the season and 22nd of his career. Five of the Czech goaltender's shutouts this year have come over his last 10 starts.

Alex Pietrangelo finished with two goals and an assist and David Perron also scored for the Blues, who extended their franchise-record home points streak to 19 games (16-0-3). Perron has six goals and an assist over his last four games and was named the NHL's Third Star last week.

St. Louis has won its last two road games, but is still just 10-11-3 as the guest this year compared to a stellar 24-3-4 mark at home.

On the injury front, the Blues have played the last five games without Jason Arnott (shoulder) and fellow forward Matt D'Agostini has sat out three in a row with a head injury. Neither player is expected to be available tonight.

The Blue Jackets had won three of four before getting dealt a 5-3 loss by Anaheim on Sunday in the opener of a three-game homestand. Corey Perry recorded his second hat trick of the season to lead the Ducks past Columbus, which fell to 9-15-3 as the host this year.

Fedor Tyutin had a goal and an assist in the loss, while Aaron Johnson and Antoine Vermette scored also for the Blue Jackets. Steve Mason stopped 30- of-35 shots in defeat.

"They executed extremely well, we made some mistakes and ended up paying for them," said Blue Jackets interim head coach Todd Richards.

Columbus captain Rick Nash enters tonight on a five-game point streak. He has one goal and five helpers during the run.

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Sportsbook Betting Lines

Who Makes the Sportsbook Betting Lines?

Las Vegas Sports Consultants (LVSC) is the world’s premier oddsmaking company and the most respected authority on making the lines. Mike Seba is a Senior Oddsmaker at LVSC and has been making lines for the last six years. In our extended interview, Seba explained that there are 4-5 oddsmakers assigned to make lines for each of the major sports (pro & college football and basketball; MLB, NHL, boxing, golf). Each of these oddsmakers bring unique opinions, strengths and weaknesses to the process. Oddsmakers at LVSC are professional sports junkies who love what they do and would probably do it for nothing if you asked them, but they do get paid for it. By necessity their approach is very research-oriented and concise, since with millions of dollars at risk there is little margin for error.

“You either have a passion for it or you don’t,” Seba said.

“The #1 thing for us is to make a line for each game that creates good two-way action. We do this by drawing from past experiences and applying them to current situations. People think it’s much more complicated, but it’s not. “

What are the Football Betting Lines Trying to Accomplish?

There is a common misconception that point spreads represent the oddsmakers’ prediction of how many points the favorite will win by. That is not the case at all – their intent is NOT to evenly split the ATS result between the teams; rather, their goal is to attract equal betting action on both sides. Stated another way, they want to create a line that half the people find appealing to bet one way while the other half find it appealing to bet the other way (known as ‘dividing the action’).

Divided action means the sportsbook is guaranteed a profit on the game because of the fee charged to the bettor (called juice or vig – typically $11 bet to win $10).

How the Opening Line Is Made

The opening line is the first line created by the oddsmakers, which is then sent out to sportsbooks. Of course there is an entire method to the madness on how the opening line is created. Seba explained that it all starts with each oddsmaker creating a line on each game based upon their own personal approach. This usually includes having up-to-date power ratings on each team.

Power ratings are the oddsmaker’s value of each team and are used as a guide to calculate a "preliminary" pointspread on an upcoming game. The power ratings are adjusted after each game a team plays. Examples of non-game factors that would require an adjustment to a team's power rating are key player injuries and player trades.

Once a game’s power rating based pointspread is determined, the oddsmaker will make adjustments to that line after considering each team's most recent games played and previous games played against that opponent. Also, adjustments are made after reading each team’s local newspapers to get a sense of what the coaches & players are thinking going into the game.

Since the oddsmaker’s ultimate goal is equally dividing the sports betting action, public perception and sportsbook betting patterns must be taken into account. For example, the public might have heavy betting interest week after week on a popular college football betting team such as USC. If an oddsmaker comes up with a preliminary line of USC -7, then an adjustment up to -7.5 or -8 would be made in response to the public’s expected USC bias.

The last step in the line-making process for each oddsmaker is taking one final look to determine whether or not the line "feels right." This is where common sense and past experience with how games are bet enters into the picture.

A round-table discussion among the 4-5 oddsmakers involved in making the line for each sport is then conducted and a consensus line is decided upon by the Odds Director before it is released to the sportsbooks. Of the 4-5 oddsmakers, generally the 2 most respected opinions are weighed more heavily by the Odds Director before he decides on the final line.

Why Sports Betting Lines Change

Once the opening line is released by LVSC, the individual sportsbooks decide if they want to make any adjustments before offering it to the public. Reasons for such adjustments include:

Experts working for the individual books having a strong opinion on the game

Individual books having players who consistently bet with certain tendencies (such as an extreme bias toward favorites or toward a certain popular team like USC)

The purpose of these adjustments, like all line adjustments, is to more equally divide the betting action.

Once betting begins, sportsbooks can adjust the line at any time. In doing so they attempt to make more attractive the team that is getting less action. By moving the line, sportsbooks can influence how the public bets on a particular game.

For example, if the pointspread on a game is 7 and most of the money is coming in on the underdog (taking the +7), sportsbooks will then move the number down to 6 ½ to try and attract money on the favorite.

Moving the line is the oddsmaker's effort to balance betting action, and often times such moves can have a major impact on a bettor’s decision. Oddsmakers can also change the line depending on various event-related factors such as player injuries or weather. Obviously, if the line comes out a week ahead of the event (which is the case in football), there is much that could happen during the week leading up to the event that could affect the line. Oddsmakers have to determine if any changes are necessary and send out an "adjusted line."

“The main objective is that our clients get equal action on both sides,” Seba said. “We’re not trying to pick the team that covers the spread, we’re trying to make it a coin flip, a tough decision (for the bettor). If we’ve done that, we’ve done our job.”

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