Team USA enters Friday’s Men’s Ice Hockey semifinal against Slovakia as a massive favorite.
The Americans are listed at -850 to reach the gold-medal game, while Slovakia sits at +570. That roughly translates to an 89.5-percent chance that we see the Yanks march on to Sunday’s finale, when you convert to implied probability.
That price may seem extreme, given how pesky the Slovaks have been throughout the tournament and how close the quarterfinals came to producing multiple shocks. But the odds reflect a simple reality. There is a significant talent gap between these two teams.
Should bettors lean into the talent discrepancy on display on Friday? Or does Slovakia tick enough boxes to warrant a wager on what would be a monumental upset?
USA vs. Slovakia odds, prediction
The case for Slovakia starts with the nature of the sport and the volatility of a single-elimination game. At its core, hockey is controlled chaos. Ten players chasing after a piece of vulcanized rubber on an ice sheet. Weird stuff is bound to happen. Funky bounces have the power to decide seasons, playoff series, or who goes to a gold-medal game. Anything can happen in a game of ice hockey. Just ask the Soviets.
However, it’s not a good sign when “well, s–t happens” is your first building block for a team’s path to victory in a given game.
But that’s where we’re at with Slovakia going up against Team USA.
That doesn’t mean there isn’t some serious skill in the Slovak camp, but it just doesn’t compare to what the Americans brought to Milan.
Take Slovakia’s best player, Juraj Slafkovsky, for example. The former No. 1 overall pick has been fantastic in the Olympics, registering seven points (3 G, 4 A) in four games, but he would have been a 50-50 shot at best just to make the American roster.
Betting on the NHL?
That isn’t even the main concern here. The top of Slovakia’s roster, which also features former NHLers Tomas Tatar and Adam Ruzicka, plus current ones in Dalibor Dvorsky, Martin Fehervary, Simon Nemec and Erik Cernak, is not the issue. Those guys can do a job in this contest. The real issue here is what happens when Slovakia’s top players are off the ice.
So much attention is paid to the star power at the Olympics, but what truly separates the contenders from the rest is depth. The bottom of Team USA’s lineup is light-years ahead of Slovakia’s, and nearly every skater on Team USA’s third or fourth line, or second and third defense pair, would be a top-line player for the Slovaks.
It’s easy to establish why the United States is such a heavy favorite, but it does become more complicated when you try to find a betting angle for this contest. Picking a winner and finding value are not the same thing. The Americans are much more likely to win on Friday, but the price is astronomical, and as we’ve established, hockey is a sport built on uncertainty, and these Slovaks have proven to be a tough out.
If you really felt compelled to play a side on the moneyline, it would have to be the Slovaks, but I think there’s better value on the board in a couple of other markets.
The first is to target the first period total. The Americans have put an emphasis on taking care of the defensive side of things in this tournament, and that has led to some conservative starts. Team USA and Sweden were knotted, 0-0, after the first period in the quarterfinals, and it took a while for the Stars and Stripes to really establish themselves in group-stage games against Germany, Denmark and Latvia.
We could see a feeling-out process in the first 10-15 minutes of this contest, which would be just fine with Slovakia. You can get +410 on the first period to end nil-nil at FanDuel.
The other angle I think is worth exploring is to back Matt Boldy to have a big game. He’s in a cushy spot as the third wheel on a line with Auston Matthews and Jake Guentzel, and the Minnesota Wild star took advantage of that role with an impressive display against Sweden. Boldy notched a point on the game-winning goal and added four shots against the Swedes, giving him 17 shots on target across his last three contests.
Eventually, the dam will break.
Boldy is +250 to score, 22/1 to tally two goals and 16/1 to score the first goal of the game. I like any of those, but we’ll go big with Boldy to double-dip against Slovakia on Friday.
The Plays: 1P Under 0.5 goals (+410), Matt Boldy to score 2+ goals (22/1, FanDuel)
Why Trust New York Post Betting
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.