Sports: How best to bet the NHL’s newlook playoffs

Minnesota’s Ryan Hartman (right) and Tampa Bay’s Kevin Shattenkirk race for the puck during an NHL game on December 5. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara)

AIMING FOR VALUE

YOUR GUIDE TO BETTING THE START OF THE NHL POSTSEASON

BY CASE KEEFER

The NHL’s protracted return-to-play procedures have given sportsbooks

plenty of time to offer full betting menus, and the value isn’t all gone yet. Here are fi ve worthwhile wagers to consider going into the qualifying round, which begins on August 1. (Odds at press time)

Calgary Flames to beat Winnipeg Jets in qualifying-round series: minus-115 (risking $1.15 to win $1) at Circa Sports

The Flames are far superior to the Jets in every area except one—goaltending. Yes, that’s a big area, but it’s also a  ckle one. Performance in net is notoriously tough to predict, especially in the postseason; virtually every year some unexpected goalie catches  re and leads his team deep into the bracket.

Just because Connor Hellebuyck was the best netminder in the regular season four months ago doesn’t mean he can just pick up where he left o , especially against a team with the o ensive  repower of the Flames. Skater performance is typically steadier; we know the Flames’ Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk are going to get their points.

The Jets rated dead last in the NHL in expected-goal-for percentage this year at 43.7%, and despite Hellebuyck’s best e orts, weren’t on pace to make the playo s under the traditional format. They shouldn’t now be in a series priced as a coin  ip against a better team.

Minnesota Wild to beat Vancouver Canucks in qualifyinground series: plus-125 (risking $1 to win $1.25) at Circa Sports

The unluckiest draw of the NHL’s new 24-team postseason setup went to the Canucks. They landed in a nightmare matchup with the Wild, which employs a domineering defensive style that typically gives young, free- owing teams like the Canucks  ts. Minnesota has gone 4-2 against Vancouver in six regularseason meetings between the two teams over the past two seasons, and there’s no reason to think this  vegame series will be any di erent.

The Canucks have the higher-end talents, like potential future superstars Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes, but the Wild have a blue line full of veteran players who have made a career out of roughing up bigger-name opponents. It’s going to take a Herculean, coming-of-age performance to get the Canucks out of the play-in round.

They might be capable, but this line implies their win probability in the series is more than 58 percent, which is way too high.

Carolina Hurricanes to beat New York Rangers in qualifyinground series: minus-125 at Circa Sports

Con rmed: Recency bias can carry over after four months with no games. There’s no other way to explain this series price.

It would have been signi cantly higher in the Hurricanes’ favor at any point over the  rst  ve months of the season, before a Rangers’ hot streak in February drastically altered perception. New York was one of the worst teams in the league until a run in which it won nine of 10 games to get back into the fringes of the playo conversation.

Carolina has been relatively disappointing in its own right but has consistently produced at a clip above New York and stayed ahead in the standings. Concerns about the Hurricanes’ frenetic, attacking style not working in the playo s are also no longer valid, considering Carolina reached the eastern conference  nals last year.

Teams from major markets like the Rangers often draw undue betting action, which in turn throws o the lines, when they show signs of life. This might be the latest example.

St. Louis Blues to win Western Conference top seed: plus-180 at Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook

Consider this a process-of-elimination play. Three of the four teams in the Western Conference round robin to determine seeding for the round of 16 grade out as incredibly evenly-matched: the Vegas Golden Knights, the Colorado Avalanche and the Blues. The Dallas Stars are by no means a walkover, but they’re a bit behind by any measure and lacking the o ensive  repower of the top three.

The Golden Knights have probably looked like the best of the bunch under new coach Peter DeBoer, but read between the lines, and he’s hinted that he’s not overly concerned with the results of the round-robin games. DeBoer has said he’ll tinker with lineups and looks against the Blues, Avalanche and Stars to make sure the Golden Knights are at their best when the ensuing seven-game series begins.

The Avalanche have clobbered both the Golden Knights and Blues this year, but there’s some evidence that they’ve been lucky on the season as a whole. They’re  ve games above .500 in one-goal games and lead the NHL with a 102.1 PDO — shooting-plus-save percentage that normalizes to 100 over time.

That leaves the defending Stanley Cup champions, who look like the biggest benefactors of the fourmonth pause. All the minutes the Blues’ players logged through the playo s last year matter less now that they’ve had extra time to rest.

Part of St. Louis’ identity during last year’s championship run was its game-by-game intensity. The Blues couldn’t a ord to take any nights o after a disastrous start of the season that at one point saw them sitting with the worst record in the Western Conference.

Expect them to bring the same level of energy to Edmonton and sit atop the Western Conference seeding.

Tampa Bay Lightning to win Stanley Cup: plus-785 at Circa Sports

Past playo disappointment isn’t predictive. Just look at the past two Stanley Cup champions: Both the Blues and especially the Washington Capitals had reputations as postseason chokers before breaking through.

Poking fun at the Lightning for its recent playo failures has become a sport in itself for hockey fans, but these things usually don’t last forever. Behind the likes of Nikita Kucherov, Steven Stamkos and Victor Hedman, the Lightning have been the best team in the NHL over the past three years, and it hasn’t been that close when one looks over the largest sample size and doesn’t isolate for the playo s.

It’s extremely di cult to win the Stanley Cup, and the Lightning is likely to trip up again, but Tampa is less likely to do it than any other team in the league, and the odds don’t re ect that. At most sportsbooks, the Golden Knights and Boston Bruins are listed at lower odds to win the Stanley Cup.

That shouldn’t be. The Lightning are the true favorites in the NHL’s return-to-play.

Southern Nevada real estate pros reinvent the way they do business during pandemic

BY BRYAN HORWATH A s the COVID-19 pandemic continues to cause upheaval and uncertainty in Southern Nevada's economy, Vegas Inc takes a look at the local real estate market.

Uri Vaknin, a Downtown Las Vegas condominium developer, is a partner at KRE Capital, which, in a partnership with Dune Real Estate Partners, purchased Juhl and One Las Vegas in 2013. Combined, the buildings have several hundred condo units.

Vaknin spoke with us about the challenges the real estate market has faced, and how it has adjusted. His answers were edited for brevity and clarity.

As you attempt to sell condos during these economically challenging times, how has business

changed? During the lockdown, we moved everything to a virtual platform. We set up 3D virtual tours of all of our available inventory and created more video material. We also started doing open houses via Zoom meetings. That’s interesting, because I think it will forever change how people buy real estate.

In the past, people would look at things online, but then they would jump in a car and run around. Now, people are expecting full-on presentations of a property. What’s been great about that is it helps to shorten the time frame of a sale, especially with out-of-town buyers.

You said you’ve noticed an infl ux of out-of-town buyers to Las Vegas during the pandemic.

What’s happening there? We thought that for all the people who had been thinking of moving to Las Vegas, COVID-19 would accelerate that, for all the reasons why people have traditionally moved to Las Vegas and Nevada. Those, of course, are a ordability, low taxes in general, no state capital gains tax, less congestion and the ability to just live an upper-middle-class lifestyle. …

About half of our sales after the onset of COVID-19 have been from Californians. We’ve seen a lot of interest from Northern California, which is new. Before COVID-19, probably about 30% of our sales were going to California people.

What’s your take on where the Las Vegas housing market is now and where it could be headed

in the next few months? The market was doing great in January and February. In March, people started

getting nervous, then we hit the lockdown. What’s happened now, partly because of a lot of California buyers coming in, is we’re rebounding.

The fear for the overall economy here—the elephant in the room—is the possibility of a second lockdown. I think that would have a pretty devastating e ect on many levels.

Many businesses have had to adjust their business models or offerings to survive or continue to thrive during the pandemic. Has that been

your experience? I hate to use the word “fun,” but it has been fun in a way, because you’ve had to reinvent yourself and become better at what you do. You have to think di erently but also be open to the buyer. An interesting thing we’ve seen is that buyers expected to be getting COVID-19 pricing. They thought the economic crisis would have caused a housing crisis.

However, almost nowhere in America has that happened. According to Freddie Mac, purchase demand activity is up about 20% from a year ago. It’s the highest since 2009. With low interest rates, buyers have been put into a home-buying mood.

How is Downtown doing? What people have really liked about Downtown, especially when people were staying at home, was you could go outside and rent a bicycle and ride all over. People are certainly interested in living Downtown, where they can walk around and be around other people—socially distanced now, of course. I think there’s a feeling that there’s going to be a renewed vibrancy Downtown once everything

can reopen.

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commercial real estate. HunVegasInc Notes nicutt is one of 20 recipients in the United States. Boulder City Fire Department hired Greg Chesser as StartUpNV, a port their communities. Based its new deputy nonprofit busion these new measures, four fire chief. Chessness incubator Southern Nevada hospitals were er has more for scalable listed in the top 10 hospitals in than 34 years startups, anNevada, including North Vista of experience in nounced that Hospital, St. Rose Dominican fire service, with Chesser entrepreneur, Hospitals Rose De Lima Cammore than two real estate investor and former Miss Nevada Lisa Song Sutton joined its advisory board. Sutton has served as a sales, retail and real estate mentor to startup founders participating in the StartUpNV Song Sutton pus, MountainView Hospital and Centennial Hills Hospital Medical Center. The Index shows how nearly 3,300 hospitals nationwide compare on 42 performance indicators. The measures fall under three categories: civic leadership, value of care and patient outcomes. decades in management. He has served as a firefighter, training officer, assistant fire chief in prevention, assistant operations chief and as a fire chief for the U.S. Air Force. The Silver State Health Insurance Exchange, the state agency that connects Nevadans to program. As a member of the Marianna qualified health plans through board, she will continue to Hunnicutt, a Nevada Health Link, announced mentor member companies civil engineer the licensed brokers/agents, while providing expertise to the at Kimley-Horn navigators and in-person asStartUpNV management team, and Associsisters selected as part of its acting as a sounding board on ates, received plan year 2021 grant program. programmatic decisions and the NAIOP The Southern Nevada brokers/ building professional network connections. The Lown Institute, a Brookline, and Prologis Inclusion in CRE Scholarship for Women and Hunnicutt agents awarded grants are Brian Douglas, Protect Health Brent Leavitt, Battle Born; Chris Carothers, Carothers ; Mass.-based nonpartisan think Underrepresented ProfessionInsurance Agency; and Alberto tank, used never-before-conals. The program is designed Ochoa, Smart Buy Insurance. In sidered measures for its Lown to prepare a pipeline of women addition, seven in-person assisInstitute Hospitals Index to help and minorities for development ter and navigator grantees from hospitals better serve and supand operations positions in Southern Nevada have been 17568 - E_PN_HP_LasVegas_LasVegasWeekly_7.16_ 9.375 x 5.3125_FINAL.pdf 1 7/10/20 4:06 PM issued awards: Asian Community Development Council, Asian Community Resource Center, Access to Healthcare Network, Nevada Health Centers, Nevada Outreach Training Organization, Office of Consumer Health Assistance and St. Rose Dominican Hospital Dignity Health. These grantees will receive funds to help them with marketing, outreach and enrollment efforts during the exchange’s upcoming open enrollment period for plan year 2021, which starts November 1. United Way of Southern Nevada appointed Janet Quintero as director of community and government affairs. Quintero coordinates advocacy efforts, supervises the Public Policy Committee, enhances community relations and manages community impact programs that help students from diverse backgrounds succeed, graduate from high school and obtain a degree or certification. Quintero has previously served in a variety of leadership roles, including as secretary for the Latino Youth Leadership Foundation and Immunize Nevada outreach committee chair.

Summerlin, a development of The Howard Hughes Corporation, earned the No. 4 spot on RCLCO’s national list of the country’s best-selling masterplanned communities. RCLCO, a national real estate consultant, has been tracking home sales at master-planned communities since 1994.

Salvation Army Southern Nevada appointed captains Anthony and Lisa Barnes to Clark County Commanders/Citadel Corps Officers. The captains come to Las Vegas from their previous four-year appointment in Seattle and five years in Phoenix at the southwest divisional headquarters. Wynn Las Vegas was ranked the No. 1 hotel in Las Vegas on the Travel + Leisure 2020 World’s Best Awards list honoring the top hotels, travel destinations and companies worldwide, as rated by its readers. This is the first time that Las Vegas has received its own city-specific list in the award’s 25-year history. Colliers International Las Vegas announced Lauren Willmore as its newest associate specializing in industrial brokerage services on the Willmore team. Formerly a client service specialist, Willmore will assist in securing land and industrial transactions across Southern Nevada.

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horoscopes week

o f JULY 30 by ro b brezsny

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti is renowned for his buoyancy. In one of his famous lines, he wrote, “I am awaiting, perpetually and forever, a renaissance of wonder.” Your assignment is not to sit there and wait. Your job is to embody and actualize and express, perpetually and forever, a renaissance of wonder. It’s an especially favorable time to rise to new heights in fulfilling this aspect of your lifelong assignment. TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The indigenous Coast Miwok people of Northern California believed that soul and sentience animate all animals and plants as well as rocks, rivers, mountains—everything, really. According to one of their creation stories, Coyote and Silver Fox made the world by singing and dancing it into existence. Find out about and celebrate the history of the people and the place where you live. GEMINI (May 21-June 20): “When I look down, I miss all the good stuff, and when I look up, I just trip over things,” says singer-songwriter Ani DiFranc o. Try looking straight ahead. Adopt a perspective that will enable you to detect regular glimpses of what’s above you and below you—as well as what’s in front of you. Avoid all extremes that might distract you from the big picture. CANCER (June 21-July 22): The Italian word nottivago refers to “night roamers”: people who wander around after dark. Why do they do it? Maybe their ramblings have the effect of dissolving stuck thoughts that have been plaguing them. Maybe it’s a healing relief to indulge in the luxury of having nowhere in particular to go and nothing in particular to do. Meandering after sundown may stir up a sense of wild freedom to outflank or outgrow their problems. The coming days will be an excellent time to try this out. LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Your perceptiveness will be at a peak in the coming weeks. You’ll have an ability to discern half-hidden truths that are invisible to everyone else. You’ll be aggressive in scoping out what most people don’t even want to become aware of. Take advantage of your temporary superpower. Use it to get a lucid grasp of the big picture—and cultivate a more intelligent approach than those who are focused on the small picture and the comfortable delusions. VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): “Look on every exit as being an entrance somewhere else,” wrote playwright Tom Stoppard. Meditate on that. You’re in a phase of your astrological cycle when every exit can indeed be an entrance somewhere else—but only if you believe in that possibility and are alert for it. So dissolve your assumptions about the current chapter of your life story so you can be fully open to new possibilities. LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): “One must think with the body and the soul or not think at all,” wrote author and historian Hannah Arendt. She implied that thinking only with the head may spawn monsters and demons. Mere conceptualization is arid and sterile if not interwoven with the wisdom of the soul and the body’s earthy intuitions. Ideas that are untempered by feelings and physical awareness can produce poor maps of reality. Meditate on these empowering suggestions. SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Your pow er over yourself has been increasing lately. Your ability t o manage your own moods, create your own sweet spots and define your own fate is as robust as it’s been in a while. What do y ou plan to do with your enhanced dominion? What special f eats might you attempt? Are there any previously impossible accomplishments that may now be possible? SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Author and naturalist Henry David Thoreau wrote: “ We can nev er have enough of nature. We must be r efreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder cloud and the rain which lasts three weeks and produces freshets. We need to witness our own limits transgressed, and some life pasturing freely where we never wander.” Heed Thoreau’s counsel. You would benefit fr om an extended healing session amidst natural wonders. CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): Author and activist bell hooks, who doesn’t capitalize her name, sometimes writes about her experiences teaching at universities, as in the following passage. “My students tell me, ‘we don’t want to love! We’re tired of being loving!’ And I say to them, if you’re tired of being loving, then you haven’t really been loving, because when you are loving you have more strength.” You’re in a f avorable position to boost your own strength through the invigorating power of your love. AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author Langston Hughes (1902–1967) was working as a waiter when he left three of his poems on the famous poet Vachel Lindsay’s table. Lindsay loved them and later lent his clout to boosting Hughes’ career. You might have an opening like that sometime soon. Be ready to take advantage. Cultivate every connection that may become available.

PISCES (Feb.

19-March 20): Author Faith Baldwin has renounced the “forgive and forget” policy. She writes, “I think one should forgive and remember. ... To look upon what you remember and know you’ve forgiven is achievement.” Get the relief you need. Forgive those who have trespassed against you. But hold fast to the lessons you learned through those people so you won’t repeat them.

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