2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs futures: Who to bet to secure second-round series wins
2025 Stanley Cup Playoffs futures: Who to bet to secure second-round series wins
If the conclusion of the first round of the Playoffs of the Stanley 2025 Cup is an indication, the second round should provide a lot of excitement and moments of bites for hockey fans.
The opening round ended this past weekend with a couple of Epic Game 7S in which the home teams met from two -goal deficits in the third period to move forward. The Dallas Stars scored four goals unanswered to defeat the Colorado Avalanche 4-2 on Saturday, and the Winnipeg Jets winners of the President’s Trophy scored twice at the end of the regulation to erase the 3-1 of St. Louis Blues before Captain Adam Lowry became 16:10 on the second half.
These results established a second round game between the stars and the jets, which begins on Wednesday in Canada Life Center in Winnipeg. The Jets won three of the four regular season meetings among the rivals of the central division, surpassing the stars 13-5 in the process.
The other series of western conferences has the Pacific Golden Knights winner of the division of the division facing the champion of the reignant conference Edmonton Oilers, with the party 1 scheduled for Tuesday at T-Mobile Arena de Las Vegas. The Golden Knights and Oilers, who respectively eliminated the Kings Wild and Los Angeles of Minnesota in six games in the first round, divided their four competitions by 2024-25. Vegas needed six games to eliminate Edmonton in the second round in his only game before the season of the season in 2023.
At the Eastern Conference, the leaves of Toronto Maple and the defender of the Stanley Cup champion, Florida Panthers, started the second round on Monday at Scotiabank Arena. Florida surpassed Toronto 13-7 while won three of four in the regular season and eliminated the Maple Leafs in five games in the second round two years ago, when clubs in the Atlantic Division met in the later season.
The other series of the second round in the East begins on Tuesday when the Washington Capitals adopt the hurricanes of Carolina in Capital One Arena. The home team won the four regular season meetings among the Metropolitan Division rivals, while the hurricanes took the only series of previous playoffs, defeating the capitals in seven games in the first round in 2019.
Despite finishing first in their respective conferences, Winnipeg and Washington are subdogs in their second round. Both jets and capitals have a maximum of +140 Sports books. Toronto, who finished 10 points ahead of Florida to win the Atlantic, is an even larger subdog around +150. In the meantime, the series between Vegas and Edmonton is considered basically a launch, although the Golden Knights are -115 favorites in several sports books.
Here are some valuable teams to consider when making the bets on the second -round series victories.
The best bet
Vegas Golden Knights (-105, Draftkings)
The Golden Knights did not play the best in the opening round, meeting 2-1 in the series, and won the following two games in the extension before scoring the Wild 3-2 in the game 6. No team player recorded more than five points in the game, and only four had several goals, with a defender by Shea Theodore. Pavel Dorofeyev, who led Vegas in the regular season with a maximum of 35 races, once marked in the first five games against Minnesota, but lost the game 6 with an unveiled injury and is expected to be a time decision for the opening against Edmonton. However, Brett Howden followed the best regular season of his career (23 goals) by scoring three goals, including two game winners, in the first round.
The Oilers were a period of dropping 0-3 against the Kings, but they scored four times in the third to get match 3 and won the next three contests. Calvin Pickard replaced Stuart Skinner late in match 2 and did not look back, but published only a percentage of .893 savings in the series and allowed four goals twice. Leon Draisaitl scored three high and Connor McDavid had two against the Kings, but none of the Superstrella became the last two games of the party. If they are not achieved and Vegas begins to gain more production from their most important advantages, I cannot see that the oilers make their second direct trip to the final of the conference.
Best Longshot
Toronto maple leaves (+152, caesars)
It is difficult to bet against the Panthers of the defense champion, especially after the way they passed in front of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the first round. In the meantime, the Maple Leafs reached a 3-0 series leadership against Ottawa Senators, but the next two contests fell and needed heroics from the third period of Max Pacietty in match 6 to advance until the second round for the second time since 2004. Florida certainly has the advantage in the fold with Sergei Bobrovsky the work done on the playoffs.
The Maple Leafs need a great deal of offensive effort of Maurice Richard Trophy, Auston Matthews, who only scored twice in the opening round and recorded three more than 16 games in his last three season series (zero in five Florida competitions in 2023). For some reason, I like Toronto’s possibilities with the main coach Craig Berube, who worked wonders with St. Louis in 2018-19 and guided the leaves to only his second division title since 1999-2000 in his first year behind his bench.
