Everyone knows the house always wins in Las Vegas. Oddsmakers just had the wrong house.
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The Vegas Golden Knights have dominated opponents with a league-best 19-2-2 home record. In a city where fans can show their enthusiasm in the form of a wager before heading to T-Mobile Arena, the dominance has an added dimension.
"We've been getting our butts kicked," South Point oddsmaker Jimmy Vaccaro said. "We should rename it 'free date night.' A guy invites a girl out to dinner and stops at the sportsbook on the way to the game. What she doesn't realize is we are paying for everything."
A $100 wager on every Knights home game in 2017-18 to date would have net a bettor $1,395. That is an extraordinarily profitable return. And, though hockey losses typically amount to little more than a rounding error for a casino's bottom line, the phenomenon that has been the first season for the first big-league team based in the only U.S. city where you can make a legal wager has created a perfect storm effect for the books.
"Hockey is usually a very poorly bet sport," William Hill director of trading Nick Bogdanovich said. "But all of a sudden we have big decisions and we keep losing them. Players just keep rolling over their winnings."
Local properties are booking between 10 and 15 times the handle on Golden Knights home games than for any other NHL team. And that number increases during the game, as fans can bet from their seats on mobile devices. In total, the handle represents the equivalent of an average NFL game, which is in the six-figure neighborhood for each sportsbook.
"When the [Chicago] Blackhawks came to town, my handle on that one game was more than the entire Stanley Cup Final last year," Golden Nugget sportsbook director Tony Miller said. "It's a good thing because they're betting other games but, man, it gets to a point where it's a love/hate relationship."
The Golden Knights surpassed their preseason over/under of 26.5 wins on Jan. 2. They can go over their projected season point total of 68.5 Thursday night against the New York Islanders. This unexpected run has collectively cost sportsbooks well over a million dollars combined, and the damage is more significant if you factor in adjoining parlays.
"The betting public found a new ATM," says Westgate Las Vegas Superbook oddsmaker and manager John Murray. "It's called the Golden Knights."


Agree with this...the Knights are on a nice run!