If recent history tells us anything, the Edmonton Oilers are about to catch some wind and get out of the doldrums.

The Philadelphia Flyers will play their third straight game in Western Canada when they visit the Oilers at Rogers Place on Tuesday night. They fought to a 3-2 shootout win in Vancouver on Friday in the season opener and then fell 6-3 to the Calgary Flames on Saturday.

This Western Canada road swing is a trip that is relatively common for NHL teams as the league strives for travel efficiencies. There have been 27 such road trips over the last three seasons, with a team facing the Vancouver Canucks, Flames and Oilers in consecutive away games in no particular order.

This season, the frequency of the trip is increasing, with the trip being made 17 times by teams excluding the Canucks, Flames and Oilers. Additionally, twelve of the teams making the trip this season, like the Flyers, are from the Eastern Conference.

Road trips are particularly long distance and take most teams away from their home country for a few days. Considering how often this particular trip to Western Canada will occur this season, it's worth looking at recent history to look for trends.

In just the third game of a 27-game, three-game series over the past three seasons, the Canucks, Flames and Oilers have a combined record of 15-12. The Canucks are 5-9, the Flames are 6-2 and the Oilers are 4-1 heading into Tuesday's game. Tuesday's game is particularly interesting because the Oilers got off to a poor start for the second straight game. In fact, the 0-3 margin from a 15-3 start this season is even worse than last season's 1-2 margin of 13-10 after three games.

But in the five games over the last few seasons, making up the final game of the trip, the Oilers have outscored their opponents 26-11 and easily erased the lead in the four of five games they won. A total of 7-8 teams from the Eastern Conference are taking part in the trip, but compared to the overall distribution the result is 5-10. Overall, the Flames, Canucks and Oilers have a 17-10 advantage against the team in these third games.

So if there's a trend to watch here, it's the Oilers taking care of business with a -1.5 spread that, likely due to their poor performance so far, actually opened at +110.

As for the over/unders on these road trips, ESPN's historical data shows 13 unders, 12 overs and two pushes. In the games alone with a total score of 6.5, the Over hit four times and the Under hit seven times. Tuesday's tilt started at 6.5 with -105 for the upper and -115 for the lower. This reflects the recent history of these games well, but it will be worth checking back closer to the game to see if the over becomes tempting, considering the Oilers have averaged 7.40 goals in these third games (the Overall average is 5.96). ).

The lines

Minnesota Wild at the St. Louis Blues

7:30 p.m., Enterprise Center, broadcast live on ESPN

• blues (-1.5, +210), -115 moneyline.

• Wild (+1.5, -300), -105 moneyline.

• Overall 5.5: (Over -125, Below +105)

The picks

This started with the Wild as the away favorites on Monday, but likely due to little information about the injury status of Joel Eriksson Ek and Jared Spurgeon, the odds have turned and the Blues were the favorites as of 9 a.m. on Tuesday. If news about Eriksson Ek or Spurgeon comes to light, there could be more flip-flops in this coin toss game.

If you are looking for props, Ryan Hartman for one point (over 0.5 points, +135) is promising as he could take over Eriksson Ek's role on the second line and top power play unit. Maybe combine that with Jake Neighbors (over 0.5 points, +115) for one +381 Parlayas Neighbors continues to be a top liner with top power play minutes but still doesn't get the love he needs.

The lines

Philadelphia Flyers at Edmonton Oilers

10 p.m., Rogers Place, live on ESPN

• Oiler (-1.5, +105), -240 moneyline.

• Flyers (+1.5, -125), +200 moneyline.

• Overall 6.5: (Over -110, Below -110)

The picks

The under odds increased from -115 to -110 overnight on Tuesday and are tempting given the Oilers' trouble scoring so far. But as outlined above, there is reason to believe the Oilers can emerge from their current crisis.

The Flyers will almost certainly use goaltender Samuel Ersson, not only because he has been solid and Ivan Fedotov has struggled, but also because the team is likely at 50-50 this season. Connor McDavid had five points during the Flyers' last visit on Jan. 3 last season.

All in all, the play could be to help the Oilers offense. A cheaper way to get started would be Jeff Skinner (over 0.5 points, +115)who is not entirely hopeless at finding chemistry with McDavid at the helm. If you like the Oilers team, a combo option could be to back up and fade Skinner Travis Konecny ​​​​(under 0.5 points, +115) combine for a +325 par play.

Betting trends

The plan for this article is to take a bi-weekly look at some of the recent trends in the NHL when it comes to odds versus results.

It may take a few iterations to figure out what information will be most useful to me, but first I'll explain a little about what kind of data we'll have. First, I collect ESPN BET's spreads, over/unders, and moneylines four times a day to begin building a database of odds. The idea is to compare over the course of the season how they compare to actual results and we can try to identify areas we can address together.

As a quick introduction this week, we're doing a sports betting 101 on the basics of spreads:

The spread is when you either bet on the favored team to outscore their opponents by the specified margin, or for the losing team to either win or at least keep the game within a margin of defeat that is smaller than the margin. Normally the spread is set at 1.5. In rare cases, we might see a spread of 2.5 in a pre-game scenario, but unless the game is currently underway, in the vast majority of cases we should see a spread of 1.5.

For the favorite or the team that is expected to win, the spread is preceded by a minus sign, e.g. B. -1.5 to indicate the number of points he must win by for a bet on him to be successful. Conversely, the underdog has a plus sign, e.g. B. +1.5, which indicates that he can either win the game outright or lose by fewer points than the spread.

Each of these spreads, for both the favorite and the underdog, is accompanied by odds. In the spread scenario, the underdog has the advantage, which is reflected in the odds and results. Of the 42 games with aggregated data that I have through Monday night, the favorites are 15-27 against the spread, while 20 of the games had odds of +150 or more for the favorite (generally, the higher the odds , the higher the rate). (less expected the result of the sports betting providers).

The underdogs, on the other hand, have odds of 27-15 against the spread, with all but two of the 42 games offering negative odds against the underdog spread; In fact, 17 of the games on offer were -200 or less.

Using odds data collected Tuesday morning, take a look at what the spread would have been if someone had placed a $1 bet on every game:

• If you had bet $1 on each favorite for the spread, you would have netted $26.17 on 17 wins and lost $28, for a net result of -$1.83.

• If you had bet $1 on each underdog for the spread, you would have netted $16.71 on 28 wins and lost $17, which would be a net result of -$0.29.

Of course, this isn't a good strategy, so we'll be looking for deeper trends as the season progresses.

As a starting point, consider the scenario of a favorite on the road.

When the favorite is at home this season, they have covered the spread just 11 of 32 times (34%). But when the favorite is on the move, they have covered six of 13 (46%). It's not a huge improvement, but it's something to keep in mind this early in the season.

In addition to the Blues mentioned above, we have another away favorite as the Vegas Golden Knights (-1.5 spread, +175) face the Washington Capitals (+1.5 spread, -225). The Capitals will be without strong defenseman Matt Roy, who is expected to miss next week. Just pay attention to these intangibles as Logan Thompson will make his debut in the Capitals goal crease against his former team. This is the kind of personal action that can derail all chances.