2024 NHL All-Star Game Odds Preview & Predictions
The 67th Annual NHL Exhibition Provides Betting Options but Should be For Fun
No matter how you might feel about the NHL All-Star weekend and any other all-star game for that matter, it gives fans a chance to be up close and personal with their favorite stars for a few days, while giving a much-needed rest to the rest of the league.
Toronto, Canada is the host city this year with the event taking place at Scotiabank Arena. The weekend starts with tonight’s skills competition and culminates with Saturday’s All-Star game starting at 3:00 p.m. ET/noon PT on ABC and ESPN. Let’s add a little spice to the weekend by looking at the game itself and a few other betting options to get through until the re-starts of the NHL regular season.
🏒 All-Star Game 🏒
Day/Time:
Location: Scotiabank Arena
Streaming: Watch Live Sports
NHL All-Star Game Betting Preview
One positive for NHL bettors is it gives all of us a chance to hit the reset button and evaluate how we feel about teams moving forward while getting a refresher on the NHL standings and what each team might do at the trade deadline.
The reason we have so much time to focus on the second half of the season is the NHL all-star game odds are minimal. There have been some changes to the weekend’s format, with the return of the fantasy draft that is conducted by four captains who will pick their teams that will play a three-on-three format.
This year’s captains are Auston Mathews (Toronto), Connor McDavid (Edmonton Oilers), Nathan MacKinnon (Colorado) and Quinn Hughes (Vancouver). In addition, each NHL team will have a celebrity captain. Captains picked their team Friday night resulting in a few books putting up numbers for the competition.
Team Mathews is the +255 favorite with Toronto’s Morgan Reilly serving as his assistant captain. A total of four Maple Leafs (William Nylander and Mitchell Marner) will play on Team Mathew’s. Goaltenders will be Jake Oettinger (Dallas) and Igor Shesterkin (NY Rangers).
Their celebrity captain will be pop star Justin Bieber. Team McDavid will feature Leon Draisaitl as an assistant captain and the Boston Bruins’ David Pastrnak as their first-round pick. Goaltenders will be Connor Hellebuyck (Winnipeg) and Sergei Bobrovsky (Florida).
Canadian-American actor Will Arnett will be the celebrity captain. Team MacKinnon will have Cale Makar (Colorado Avalanche) serving as the assistant captain. Their top pick was Sidney Crosby (Pittsburgh Penguins) with goaltenders Jeremy Swayman (Boston) and Alexander Georgiev (Colorado). Canadian singer and songwriter Tate McRae will be their celebrity captain.
Finally, Team Hughes will have Quinn Hughes (Vancouver) as the assistant captain and feature Elias Pettersson (Vancouver) along with Nikita Kucherov (Tampa Bay Lightning). Thatcher Demko (Vancouver) and Cam Talbot (Los Angeles) will be the goaltenders. Canadian Christmas sensation, Michael Buble’ will serve as the celebrity captain.
It should be noted that Jack Hughes will not play in the game due to an NHL injury. Normally we wouldn’t go through each team’s roster but they were picked late Thursday and are important when handicapping the NHL games. These three-on-three games will not produce typical NHL scores so handicapping the goaltenders is important.
After Team Mathews, Team McDavid is the next choice at +260, followed by Team MacKinnon (+265) and Team Hughes (+300).
It would be easy to recommend a wager on Team Mathews but only once since 2016 has the perceived home favorite won the competition and that was last year when the Atlantic Division won the three-on-three competition in Sunrise, Florida. We’re going with Team McDavid (+260) to cash out.
MVP and Skills Competition Betting
You’ll get a nice pay-off with these wagers starting with MVP odds. Auston Matthews is +800 to take home the honors, followed by Nathan MacKinnon (+900) and Connor McDavid (+1000). Peculiar that MacKinnon has lower NHL odds than McDavid but I think the oddsmakers’ thinking is in line with ours.
We like MacKinnon at +900. As far as the skills competition, David Pastrnak and Connor McDavid are co-favorites in the accuracy contest at +650, followed by Leon Draisitl, Nikita Kucherov, Aston Matthews, and Nathan MacKinnon at +700.
This weekend isn’t going away with the league’s top start being showcased in some way, take McDavid at +650 and also take McDavid to win the fastest skater (+110) competition. Anyone who has seen McDavid live knows there isn’t a second.
We also like JT Miller (+325) to win the hardest shot and Auston Matthews to win the one-timer competition. For our final two plays, let’s take Nikita Kucherov (+700) to win the passing challenge and MacKinnon (+550) to win the stick-handling contest.
That should give everyone enough to get through the weekend. Hit one or two of those and you’ll be in the black. That’s our preview of the NHL all-star game odds, we’ll be back next week with game previews as the NHL playoff brackets become clearer by the day.
For NHL betting news, odds analysis, and more, visit Point Spreads Sports Magazine.
