2024-25 Stanley Cup Odds and Predictions

The 2024-25 NHL season nears its end and it has been something else. The Winnipeg Jets were more of an afterthought at the beginning of the season. Fast forward to the present and the Jets are your likely NHL President’s Trophy winners and the No. 1 team in the Central Division.

Alex Ovechkin killed it for the Washington Capitals this season. The Caps, like the Jets, were not supposed to be a division champion, but they will be. On the way to a Metropolitan Division title, Ovechkin surpassed the Great One, Wayne Gretzky, and his career goal mark. The Capitals will finish as the top team in the Eastern Conference and have home ice advantage in their first-round series against either Montreal or Columbus.

The Stanley Cup playoffs are almost upon us. There is plenty of hype about which team will capture this year’s Cup. The Scores & Stats NHL experts are primed and ready to go after another successful season handicapping NHL games. Our NHL cappers will continue to bring you the best in odds, predictions, analysis, and more throughout the entire Stanley Cup playoff season.

Let’s update our 2024-25 Stanley Cup odds and predictions and take a look at our best value bets, our best longshot pick, and a couple Stanley Cup prop bets.

NHL Stanley Cup Odds

Check out the latest Stanley Cup odds courtesy of ScoresandStats:

NHL Teams	Opening Odds	January Odds	April Odds
Edmonton Oilers	+700	+600	+850
Florida Panthers	+650	+800	+700
New Jersey Devils	+2000	+1000	NA
Dallas Stars	+900	+1000	+650
Colorado Avalanche	+1400	+1100	+800
Carolina Hurricanes	+1200	+800	+1000
Washington Capitals	+2000	+1200	+950
Toronto Maple Leafs	+1800	+1100	+1200
Vegas Golden Knights	+1800	+1000	+1000
Winnipeg Jets	+5800	+1400	+1100

The Winnipeg Jets will finish the regular season with the best record in the NHL, but they are nowhere near the favorite to win the 2024-25 Stanley Cup. That honor currently belongs to the Dallas Stars. Goalie Jake Oetttinger (36-17-4, 2.36 GAA) and a strong defense are why the Stars are the favorite. Keep it tuned to Scores & Stats to find out which team our best handicappers like.

Florida, which did not win the Atlantic Division, is second on the betting board. The Panthers didn’t even finish second in the division. They wound up third with a record of 47-31-4. Still, the Panthers have one of the best goalies in the NHL in Sergei Bobrovsky (2.44 GAA) and a defense that is tough to crack.

Stanley Cup Favorites

The following NHL teams are considered the odds-on favorites to win the 2024-25 NHL Stanley Cup.

Dallas Stars (+650)

The Dallas Stars win games with defense. Oettinger is one of the top goaltenders in the league. The Stars defense is sixth in goals against average (2.68) and the penalty killing unit is fifth (82.1%). Dallas also has three 30-goal scorers (Matt Duchene, Jason Robertson, and Wyatt Johnston) and a pair (Duchene & Robertson) of 80-point scorers. That’s enough offense to make them dangerous in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

The Central Division runners-up will finish at least six points behind Winnipeg, a team that beat the Stars in three of four games this season. Interestingly, Dallas lost six straight games over the final two weeks of the season.

Florida Panthers (+700)

The Panthers are like Dallas. Florida didn’t win its division nor did the Panthers finish second. Florida will finish third in the Atlantic Division behind champion Toronto and runner-up Tampa Bay. Like Dallas, the Panthers struggled to win over the last two weeks of the regular season, losing 7 of 10 games at one point.

The Panthers are built for a playoff run. Bobrovsky won 33 games this season and finished with a save percentage of .906 in addition to the 2.44 goals against average. Sam Reinhart led the offense with 39 goals and 81 points. Against all of the teams that have already clinched a playoff berth in the Eastern Conference, the Panthers went 10-10 straight up.

Colorado Avalanche (+800)

Since the 2020-21 season, only seven different teams have played for a Stanley Cup. Take out the one outlier – Montreal in the COVID year – and you have six. One of those was Colorado. The Avalanche has been here before. If you go back six seasons, the Avs have been to the conference semifinals five times. They won the Stanley Cup in 2021-22 and are primed to do it again.

Colorado has two of the top 10 scorers in the league. Nathan MacKinnon is second in the NHL and D Cale Makar (30 goals) ranks ninth. The Avalanche offense ranks fifth in scoring and is a top 10 unit in most offensive categories. Teams can’t ignore the power of the Avs offense. The defense ranks 11th, allowing 2.82 goals per game.

MacKenzie Blackwood came over from San Jose at the trade deadline and won 22 of 37 starts. He’s got a 2.33 GAA and a .913 save percentage. He’s good enough to get the job done as long as the Colorado offense continues its onslaught of NHL defenses.

Best Stanley Cup Betting Value

The following NHL teams offer solid betting value for their Stanley Cup odds:

Colorado Avalanche

One of the things that helps a team through these long playoff seasons is experience. Guys that have been there before are used to the grind. Colorado (+800) has been to the postseason in eight straight seasons. They’ve won at least one playoff series in five of those series.

Scoring is not a problem for the Avs. As mentioned, they have two of the top 10 scorers in the league. Their biggest question mark is on defense. Colorado made a big move at the trade deadline to secure G MacKenzie Blackwood to help that problem. Colorado is deep, can score, and Cale Makar the defenseman in the NHL. With that type of talent, the Avs could make another run to the Stanley Cup, just like they did in 2021-22.

Washington Capitals

Ovechkin broke Gretzky’s record during the regular season. Could he and the Caps end 2025 with a Stanley Cup too? It’s still too early to tell, but Washington was not on anyone’s radar early in the 2024-25 season as a true Cup contender. Don’t count the Capitals out as they offer great value at +950 odds.

The Caps are talented on both ends of the ice. Goalie Logan Thompson went 31-6-6 during the regular season with a 2.49 GAA. Three skaters, led by Ovechkin’s 43 goals, finished with 30 or more and Dylan Strome the team’s leading scorer with 81 points just missed the mark with 30.

Washington will finish the regular season No. 2 in scoring (3.51 goals per game) and No. 9 in opponent scoring (2.77). That’s why Capitals are a strong value pick to win the Stanley Cup.

Top Stanley Cup Longshot

It’s almost hard to believe but the best Stanley Cup longshot is the team that finished the regular season with the best record in the league. Winnipeg (+1100) burned through the NHL season and finished with the most wins, most points, and claimed the President’s Trophy.

Connor Hellebuyck is the best goaltender on the planet right now. He led the NHL in most goaltending categories and he finished with a ridiculous 46 wins this season. His 2.02 GAA is tied for first in the NHL. With him behind the Jets, the offense doesn’t need to do much, but they do anyway. Winnipeg is fourth in the NHL in scoring averaging 3.37 goals per game.

NHL Stanley Cup Predictions

The 2024-25 Stanley Cup still comes down to a couple things. One of those is navigating this stretch of games that could take all the way until June 23. That’s over two months from now and the Stanley Cup finalists could play as many as 28 games to get their names etched on Lord Stanley’s Cup. Having experience in playing through the postseason surely helps.

Edmonton, Florida, Colorado, and Dallas have the advantage of having been to the finals in recent years. Defense wins championships, or at least that is how the saying goes. Our Scores & Stats experts aren’t convinced though. Check out all their NHL picks for the playoffs before you bet on games this postseason.

One team in the recent past won a Stanley Cup without an elite defense. Its offense was outstanding and that franchise’s team is built similarly this year. The franchise, of course, is Colorado. The Avs can score on anyone and the defense is just good enough to be dangerous

2024-25 NHL Stanley Cup Prop Bets

In addition to picking the outright winner for the Stanley Cup, sportsbooks also offer some futures prop bets as well. Let’s take a look at the following Stanley Cup prop bets and make our predictions for which Division and which Country will win Lord Stanley’s cup:

Conference to Win Stanley Cup

• Eastern (+100)
• Western (-130)

Last year, Florida broke the consecutive win streak of the Western Conference in the Stanley Cup finals. In 2023, Vegas won the Cup and the year before, it was Colorado. Now, we have Dallas, Colorado, and Edmonton among the top four favorites.

Florida is No. 2 on the betting board, the highest of all Eastern Conference teams. They are the defending Stanley Cup champions, but their roster did change from last year. The Panthers were not the dominant offensive team of a year ago. Florida led the NHL in goal differential in 2023-24 (+68). This season, that differential was just +29.

The Panthers may have the experience, but they just don’t have the roster – especially offensively – to get them to a second straight Stanley Cup.

Division To Win The Stanley Cup

• Central (+200)
• Atlantic (+210)
• Pacific (+300)
• Metropolitan (+425)

Interestingly, the betting favorite to win the Stanley Cup is from the Central Division, but that favorite did not win the division. Winnipeg won the division and the President’s Trophy as the team with the best record in the NHL.

Dallas, the favorite to win the Stanley Cup, finished second. The team our Scores & Stats experts picked to win the Stanley Cup also hails from the Central Division, but it is not Winnipeg nor is it Dallas. It’s the Colorado Avalanche, who have a plethora of offensive talent and a defense that is just good enough to win a second Stanley Cup in four years.

Which Country Will Win The 2024-25 Stanley Cup?

• USA (-290)
• Canada (+220)

Obviously, this one is juiced heavily on a team from the USA winning the Stanley Cup. Only four or five (depending upon how things play out) of the 16 teams that qualified for the playoffs are from Canada. One of those is Winnipeg, the President’s Trophy winner and another is Edmonton, which has two of the top three scorers in the NHL – Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid.

Both teams would run into Dallas or Colorado, the two top contenders in the West. Then, there is always Florida in the East. Toronto hasn’t made it past the first round of the playoffs in a month of Sundays. It would take a miracle to even get Ottawa to the Stanley Cup finals.

The bottom line is that the best teams in the NHL – minus Winnipeg, Edmonton, and Toronto – are from the USA. That’s why this bet is either on a team from the states or you skip it altogether. The last Canadian Stanley Cup champion was Montreal in 1993.

First Time Stanley Cup Winner

• Yes (+650)
• No (-1100)

For this bet, the first time teams include: Buffalo, Columbus, Nashville, Ottawa, Seattle, San Jose, Utah, Vancouver, and Winnipeg.

Like we have said before, if there is one thing that can help predict a champion, it is experience. Players that have played for championships have been through it and are much more likely to have success than those that haven’t. That’s not to say that a franchise that has never won a Stanley Cup can’t win one. However, they are much less likely to.

None of the teams above have even sniffed the playoffs consistently much let alone making it to a Stanley Cup final. Utah and Seattle are new franchises and only Ottawa has actually made it to the finals. Considering that one of the favorites or contenders is much more likely than the Senators, the only logical bet is No.

The problem with that of course is the price. A bet on the underdog doesn’t quite make sense either as it’s highly unlikely the Senators (or Columbus if it makes the postseason) win even the first round.

Recent NHL Stanley Cup Champions

The following is a list of the most recent teams to win the Stanley Cup:

Year	Stanley Cup Winner	Stanley Cup Runner-Up
2024	Florida Panthers	Edmonton Oilers
2023	Vegas Golden Knights	Florida Panthers
2022	Colorado Avalanche	Tampa Bay Lightning
2021	Tampa Bay Lightning	Montreal canadiens
2020	Tampa Bay Lightning	Dallas Stars
2019	St. Louis Blues	Boston Bruins
2018	Washington Capitals	Vegas Golden Knights
2017	Pittsburgh Penguins	Nashville Predators
2016	Pittsburgh Penguins	San Jose Sharks
2015	Chicago Blackhawks	Tampa Bay Lightning