It is 5-2, Anaheim Ducks. Game 6, first round, the Edmonton Oilers go home, and the league scoring champion stands at a podium and tells reporters, with a straight face, that his team has been searching for consistency the whole year and obviously did not find it in the playoffs. Connor McDavid, the same Connor McDavid who put up 48 goals and 90 assists for 138 points and led the entire National Hockey League in scoring, then characterized his roster as an "average team with high expectations." Read that. Reread it. Now look at the Stanley Cup futures ticket you bought in October at +650 because the Oilers had been to the Final two years running and "this was the year." That ticket is wallpaper. That ticket is a coaster. That ticket is the receipt of you, on a beach in October, telling your wife the bet was a lock.
This is the part of the calendar where a certain kind of sportsbook customer learns what futures markets actually are. Futures markets are a five-month emotional commitment to a number you bought during preseason hype, a number you defended every time someone questioned it at a bar, and a number that, for the second straight year, has been disassembled by a Stadium Series Tuesday in late April. The Oilers were the second-line favorite to win the Western Conference in some books for most of the regular season. They had Connor McDavid. They had Leon Draisaitl. They had two of the three best forwards on Earth, and they had an injury list that conveniently did not exist when the Western Conference futures lines were posted. They were eliminated in six games in the first round by a Ducks team that nobody, and I mean nobody, was writing into their bracket two weeks ago. Mason McTavish and Leo Carlsson, two players whose names I had to triple-check, just put your futures bag in a Ziploc and threw it in the freezer.
The Quote Is The Headline. The Quote Is Always The Headline.
"That's been the whole year. We've been searching for consistency the whole year. Obviously we didn't find it in the playoffs." That is McDavid, on the record, after a 5-2 Game 6. That is the league MVP-caliber center, the player who carried the franchise to back-to-back Cup Final appearances, telling the building that the team he captained was, in his own assessment, average. There is no spin lane on that quote. You cannot diagram around it. You cannot talk-radio your way out of it. The man at the top of the scoring race said the team was average. The futures market priced the team at +650. The futures market and the captain were not looking at the same team.
What this means in practical terms is that every single one of you who bought Edmonton at any point in October, December, or "right after McDavid's hot streak in February," who told yourself the price was good, who watched the regular season grind through 82 games and then watched Game 1 and felt the dread, you are now in the part of the experience where you watch other teams play in the second round on a network you keep paying for. You bought a ticket to a wedding. The wedding got called off in the parking lot. The bartender is keeping your tip.
Anaheim Did Not Need To Be Great. They Just Needed To Be Healthier.
The cleanest way to understand what happened is to stop looking at McDavid's points column and look at his ice time column instead. McDavid sustained an ankle injury in Game 2 of the series. He played the rest of the series compromised. He produced four points across the first four games, well below his regular-season pace, and visibly could not turn the corner the way he turns the corner against any other defender on Earth. The Oilers leaned on him for 22-plus minutes a night because the Oilers always lean on him for 22-plus minutes a night, and the Oilers do not have a Plan B for a compromised McDavid because the Oilers' Plan A has been Connor McDavid since 2015. The Ducks' game plan was not exotic. The Ducks just played North-South hockey at a healthy roster, ran four lines, and let the league's best player skate on a bad ankle for six games. Six games is enough.
The Edmonton goaltending was not great. The Edmonton penalty kill was not great. Stuart Skinner had a series in which he looked, for the second straight year, like a goalie a real Cup contender would have already replaced. Lukas Dostal at the other end was, in the words of every Pacific Division-watching beat writer I follow, "fine." Fine beat the Edmonton Oilers in six games. Fine is now in the second round.
What This Did To The Books
The books loved this. The books had Edmonton liability stacked from October. Every guy who bet $200 on the Oilers at +650 was a guy the books were rooting against. The Anaheim Ducks first-round line moved from Edmonton -210 in Game 1 to "we did not need to set Game 7 odds because there is no Game 7" in 13 days. There is no scenario in which a sportsbook lost net money on this series. The futures bagholders are the customers. The Game 6 moneyline customers are the customers. The "Oilers in 5" parlay customers are the customers. Every customer is a customer. The book is the book.
The Therapy Section
This is the part of the article where I, your gambling-affected friend, walk you through the five stages.
- Denial. "McDavid was hurt, the futures bet was fine, with a healthy roster they win this series." Sure. They were not healthy. They are not going to be healthy in October either. The futures market does not refund you for "they were unhealthy." The futures market refunds you for "they won the Cup."
- Anger. "Skinner cost me my futures." Skinner cost a lot of people a lot of things. Skinner is also the goalie the Oilers chose. The Oilers' goalie depth has been a problem for three straight playoffs. The futures market priced this as a coin flip. You took the side without a goalie. That is on you.
- Bargaining. "If I just hedge with Florida or Carolina now, I get most of my number back." Numbers got worse. The Stanley Cup field is now condensed onto teams that have been alive longer than your team. You will not buy back your stake. You will buy a smaller refund and pay vig on the buyback.
- Depression. "I am, I think, going to bet the second round to chase." Don't.
- Acceptance. "The captain of my futures bet just told the building his team was average. I should believe him." Yes. He has more information about that team than you do.
The Receipt
If you held the Oilers at +650, you had a $200 ticket worth $1,500 if it cashed. If you held them at +800 in deeper preseason, the ticket was worth more. None of those tickets are tickets anymore. They are wallpaper. They are coasters. They are the artifact of a version of the season that ended in the first round to a team you had not seriously thought about since 2007. Connor McDavid, the league's leading scorer, just told you, on camera, that the team was average. The book is keeping your stake. The Ducks are flying back to Anaheim with the next round on the schedule. You are at home, opening a new tab, looking up the Western Conference second-round odds, telling yourself you are not going to do this. You are going to do this.
The point of the exercise, the only honest point, is that the league's best regular-season player, the franchise centerpiece, the most marketable star in the sport, just publicly characterized his own group as average and got eliminated in six games by a team that did not exist on your bracket. Every futures-market correction is a public service announcement that the futures market priced for fantasy and got reality. The Cup will be raised in June by a team that is not the Edmonton Oilers, for the third year running, while McDavid sits on a couch and watches the same playoff he could not finish. You will sit on a different couch and watch the same playoff. The book sits on a third couch, made of money. That couch is real. The Oilers' window is, as McDavid pretty much told us, average.