2023-24 NHL awards predictions: Jon Cooper can win Jack Adams Award
We’re now entering the third week of the 2023-24 NHL season, and by the close of play Saturday every team in the NHL will have played at least 10 games.
It’s still early, but we’re starting to put this puzzle together and can start to come up with some betting strategies for at least the next few weeks.
Before we get into profiling some teams, there is a futures bet that is worth adding to your portfolio right now.
Coach of the Year watch
Jon Cooper of the Tampa Bay Lightning is 25/1 (BetMGM) to win the Jack Adams Award as coach of the year, and that number seems way too long considering how the Bolts have fared through their first eight games.
Despite not having all-world goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, the Lightning are sitting in a decent spot with a 4-2-3 record and have a very soft schedule coming up.
Like a lot of awards, building a strong narrative is vital to winning the Jack Adams and Cooper is putting together as compelling a story as any coach in the NHL right now.
The Bolts were being pegged to take a significant step back this season and those murmurs only grew louder with Vasilevskiy’s injury, but Tampa Bay has stabilized and seems hellbent on proving the skeptics incorrect.
Despite leading the most successful team in the NHL over the last decade and winning two Stanley Cups, Cooper — the longest-tenured coach in the NHL — has never won the Jack Adams.
That could change with the way things are going for the Bolts so far.
Ducks could be league’s peskiest underdog
You don’t want to draw conclusions this early in the season, but it seems as if the betting market was correct making the San Jose Sharks the betting favorite to finish with the worst record this season.
Where it was seemingly incorrect, however, was making the Ducks the second choice.
Not only is Anaheim 5-4 to start the season, but the Ducks already have collected wins against the Carolina Hurricanes and Boston Bruins, plus they upset an in-form Philadelphia Flyers squad on the road over the weekend.
Betting on the NHL?
Anaheim has all the classic makings of a team that will punch up well.
The goaltending has started hot, there’s effective veteran players in the middle of the lineup to ensure the Ducks don’t get caved in for half of the game, and, most importantly, Anaheim has a handful of up-and-coming players — including 20-year-old center Mason McTavish, who has eight points in eight games — who should provide enough scoring to make the Ducks dangerous.
The market will catch up to the Ducks soon, but there will be plenty of opportunities to grab big numbers on them in the near future.
Sell high on Golden Knights
We need to tip our caps to Vegas. Not only have the Golden Knights avoided the dreaded Stanley Cup hangover, but they’ve done it in style with an 9-0-1 start to the new season.
Now that we’ve done that, we can try to poke some holes in this alleged juggernaut.
While you can only beat the teams on your schedule, it must be said that the Knights have had a pretty soft start to the 2023-24 season.
Vegas has played a struggling Seattle team and five games against Chicago, San Jose. Philadelphia and Anaheim, all of whom were projected to be stone-cold locks for the lottery this spring.
And it’s not as if Vegas is tilting the ice all that much against these opponents.
Vegas ranks 21st in shot attempt share, 17th in expected goals percentage and 17th in high-danger scoring chance rate at five-on-five through nine games, but red-hot goaltending (the Knights rank third in the NHL with a .923 save percentage) has been the difference for the defending champs.
Vegas is going to be really good, but its record does flatter the Golden Knights a bit and makes them good sell-high candidates over the next couple of weeks.
