Morning Coffee: Jets a popular pick to win Western Conference, Stanley Cup at FanDuel

The NHL regular season sets the stage for the 16 teams that advance to the playoffs.

It doesn’t guarantee a thing once the postseason begins.

If it did, the Winnipeg Jets would be considered an obvious betting favourite to win the Stanley Cup.

Instead, the Presidents’ Trophy favourite is outside of the top six choices to win it all at FanDuel this morning.

The Jets lead the NHL with 88 points through 61 games.

Winnipeg owns a league-best plus-71 goal differential.

Yet, four teams have shorter odds to represent the Western Conference in this year’s Stanley Cup Final.

Is the Jets to win the Western Conference at +650 a smart bet to make ahead of the NHL trade deadline?

What about Winnipeg to win the Stanley Cup at +1300?

We’re just over six weeks away from confirming whether the Jets are in fact being undervalued and overlooked in the FanDuel NHL futures markets.

As for the immediate future, Winnipeg will get another opportunity to add to a deep and talented roster ahead of this Friday’s NHL trade deadline.

While their fans can point to the odds as further proof that their team isn’t getting the respect that it deserves, the FanDuel traders were quick to point out to me that the Jets are an overwhelmingly popular pick to win both the Western Conference and the Stanley Cup this season.

This is the Morning Coffee for Monday March 3^rd, 2025.

Jets A Popular Pick To Win Western Conference, Stanley Cup At FanDuel

Regular season success can set the stage for an NHL team to make a deep postseason run.

However, hockey fans understand that the playoffs are a very different type of beast than the regular season, as well as a true test of a team’s character and depth.

Grasping this concept makes it easier to understand why the Jets have such long odds to win both the Western Conference and the Stanley Cup despite being a popular pick in both FanDuel futures markets.

Per the FanDuel traders, Winnipeg is the third-most popular pick to win the Stanley Cup by total handle.

Only the Edmonton Oilers and New York Rangers have been more popular in terms of actual money wagered.

Meanwhile, the Jets are by far the most popular pick to win the Western Conference at FanDuel.

Per the FanDuel traders, Winnipeg has attracted more than four times as many bets to win the West than the second-most popular pick in Edmonton.

So how could we explain the Jets still being +650 to win the West and +1300 to win the Stanley Cup this morning?

First, we must acknowledge the current numbers are much shorter than where Winnipeg opened the season.

The Jets were +2600 to win the Stanley Cup on the opening night of the NHL regular season.

They were still +2200 to win it all after winning their first eight games as the market reacted to their strong start.

Fast-forward a few months later, Winnipeg is +1300 as the seventh choice to win the Stanley Cup at FanDuel.

All six teams ahead of them on that list had shorter odds to win it all at the start of the season.

All six teams ahead of them on that list are still considered serious Stanley Cup contenders.

It’s easy for hockey fans to get caught up in the numbers over the course of a long NHL regular season.

The reality is that no matter how many wins a team racks up between October and April, they’ll still need 16 more wins when it matters the most to win the Stanley Cup.

Past postseason success weighs heavily into the equation.

In each of the previous two years, Winnipeg has recorded exactly one postseason win.

In 2022-23, they won Game 1 of their first-round series against the Vegas Golden Knights before losing in five.

In 2023-24, they won Game 1 of their first-round series against the Colorado Avalanche before losing in five.

As impressive as the Jets have been this regular season, nobody should be surprised the teams that eliminated them in each of the last two postseason have shorter odds to win it all this morning.

It also shouldn’t be a surprise that the Dallas Stars are ahead of the Avalanche, Golden Knights, and Jets in FanDuel futures markets after they eliminated both Colorado and Vegas in last year’s playoffs.

Then there’s the Edmonton Oilers, who avoided the Stars, Avalanche, Golden Knights, and Jets until they had to play Dallas in the Western Conference Finals.

The Oilers got past the Los Angeles Kings in seven and Vancouver Canucks in six before they beat the Stars in six to reach the Stanley Cup Final.

Edmonton rallied from a 3-1 series deficit in the Stanley Cup Final to force a Game 7 against the Florida Panthers before ultimately falling just short in a 2-1 loss.

That deep postseason run made it easy to forget the Oilers disastrous start to the regular season.

Remember this?

So even though Edmonton just snapped a five-game losing streak with a 3-1 win over the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday, the Oilers are still the betting favourite to win the Stanley Cup at +600 thanks in large part to two of the best hockey players in the world and prior success.

The Western Conference is stacked at the top, featuring five of the top seven choices to win the Stanley Cup.

The Hurricanes and the reigning Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers are the two Eastern Conference teams near the top of that list.

With the NHL trade deadline on the horizon, it will be interesting to see if any of those top teams can make the type of move that will solidify their status as serious contenders.

As for the Jets, the betting outlook is simple.

If you believe Winnipeg’s regular season success is a true indicator of the team’s Stanley Cup chances, then it makes a lot of sense to bet the Jets to win the Western Conference at +650 and the Stanley Cup at +1300.

If you feel the opposite after back-to-back first-round playoff exits, then it makes sense to look elsewhere.

As far as Jets fans and the majority of FanDuel bettors are concerned, nothing would be better than Winnipeg parlaying its regular season success into a Stanley Cup win at long odds.