Wager: The Sens are twice as likely as the Habs to win the Cup

Dose
Crédit: Nick Suzuki scores a goal, celebrating with teammates at Bell Centre.

After a relatively busy start to the off-season for the Montreal Canadiens, fans are eager to see the newcomers in action, with Noah Dobson certainly attracting the most attention. Despite the departures of veterans like David Savard, Joel Armia and Christian Dvorak, the Habs club looks good on paper.

Obviously, this isn’t a team that can win the Stanley Cup, but there are always surprises.For fun, I took a look at the Mise-o-jeu site to see the odds on each team to win the big honours.

To my surprise, the Habs have a rating of 60 (your bet times 60), which is pretty high, but what surprises me more is seeing the Ottawa Senators have a rating half that (30).

Credit: Mise-o-jeu

[content-ads]Do the Senators have such a better team than the Habs with their recent additions?

On paper, it’s debatable whether the Sens have a better team than the Habs, but that doesn’t mean they’re half as good. I’m not so sure about that one. Let’s compare the top-6 forwards on each team

  • Brady Tkachuk – Tim Stützle – Claude Giroux – David Perron – Dylan Cozens – Drake Batherson
  • Juraj Slafkovsky – Nick Suzuki – Cole Caufield – Ivan Demidov – Kirby Dach – Zachary Bolduc

Tkachuk has the edge over Slafkovsky right now, but Slaf is still young and could very well explode this season. Stützle is more talented than Suzuki, but has 10 fewer points than the latter, while being less complete and reliable. On the second line, a lot depends on the performance of the Habs’ three players. Demidov could disappoint, but given that he’s (by far) the favourite for the Calder Trophy, we can expect a lot of production from him. Bolduc is likely to score a lot of goals in a bigger role, and as for Dach, it all depends on whether he plays like he did at the start of each season before getting injured. And I’d still give the Habs a slight edge on the third line, while Ottawa has a better fourth line, in my opinion. Basically, on the attack, it’s still pretty even, but when you look at the defense, the Habs seem to have a much bigger advantage, especially on the right side

  • Jake Sanderson – Artem Zub – Thomas Chabot – Nick Jensen – Tyler Kleven – Jordan Spence
  • Kaiden Guhle – Noah Dobson – Lane Hutson – Alexandre Carrier – Mike Matheson – Jayden Struble/Arber Xhekaj.

In my opinion, there’s no doubt that the Habs’ defensive brigade as a whole is superior to that of the Sens. And here, in goal, we can give the Senators the edge with Linus Ullmark versus Samuel Montembeault, although the latter did a very good job.

Tell me, do the Senators really deserve a rating half that of the Habs? [spacer title=’Overtime’] – A “hockey deal” in sight for the Flames?

– À lire.

– Interesting.