Hey Yo: Sports Talk with Some Southern Swagger

Preds have an afternoon game today (11/14) and a morning game on Sunday (11/16) against the Pittsburgh Penguins in Sweden. While I loathe the NFL efforts to have games in Europe, I welcome the NHL playing games in Europe and candidly wish they played more in Europe.

The NHL is essentially made up of 40% Canadians, 30% Americans, and 30% Europeans so it is easy to see why the NHL would be playing games over in Europe. Along those same lines over the past year the NHL World Cup of Hockey was the best thing that hockey has done in recent memory and possibly ever. It seemed to capture the mainstream sports world and showcased the greatness of hockey. I get hockey doesn’t have the historical mainstream appeal as baseball and basketball but when you go watch a game in person the speed, physicality, and non-stop action really stands out compared to attending a regular season MLB and NBA game. Will hockey ever slide into the #2 American sport behind football? Probably not, but there is an opportunity to continue to narrow that gap and now is the perfect time for Hockey to continue to do things to try to highlight what a great product they have to showcase. While saying all that it would be nice if the European games were on ESPN or TNT instead of NHL Network for that it actually reaches an audience but all in all this is a great thing for growing the game of hockey.

The other thing that stands out when comparing the NHL with the NFL is the NFL only has 8-9 Home games while the NHL has 41 Home games. If you reduce the number of home games by a couple for the NHL for them to be neutral site games in Europe it doesn’t impact the season ticket holder experience while the reduction of even 1 home game for an NFL team does feel like a substantial loss for season ticket holders. The next step for the NHL feels like sending 4 teams over at a time and having a round robin instead of the same two teams playing twice in less than 48 hours.

Some quick predictions and favorite bets for the games in Europe (using Draftkings for the odds): Filip Forsberg shots on goal 5+ (+300) he is going to be amped playing in Sweden and will pepper the net, Malkin Goal (+205) for some reason it feels like he always scores against the Preds, and Penguins moneyline (-130) the Preds just aren’t that good so it feels like a game the Penguins win. You can parlay those 3 bets for +1300 odds. I am going to track my bets that I give our on a spreadsheet to see how bad of a bettor I actually am (expectation is very bad).