For the first time in nearly 6 weeks, we experienced a win / loss ratio under .500, also including an overall profit loss. There were a couple of reasons for that as we experimented with a different style of betting. Here are the stats:

Record of pick'ems: 14-18

Profit with pick'ems: -$24.27 (or -2.43 units)

Record on player props: 11-16

Over player props: 11-9

Under player props: 0-1

Anytime goal scorer: 0-6

Record on game lines / team or game props: 3-2

Last minute adds: 1-0

Most profitable bet: Keller o0.5 PPP, Kopitar o0.5 PPP (+240)

Downfalls of the week:

• Too many long-shot "valued bets" that were taken

• Horrendous performance on any-time goal scorers

• Sense of grinding the whole week out

• Other distractions such as fantasy hockey playoffs

• Sunday blow-up day

It's pretty obvious where I went wrong. I took a lot of anytime goal scorers because I have been successful with these in the past. Not this week. Some bets in hindsight may have been great value, and I am convinced that if one just hit, we would have finished with an overall profit this week. For example, Roslovic any-time goalscorer against the Penguins on Tuesday almost cashed at +400, when he had a huge chance to score that unfortunately didn't go. This would have given us a +5 unit betting shift, and thus easily would have netted profit overall. I do need to be careful with these though. Too many of them and I will lose my shirt. I'll try to limit these to 3-4 plays a week tops in the future and be a little more surgical with them. Also, I know we made good on some profitable bets like the power-play points, but it really felt like this week was a grind to stay above .500, which I guess is not necessary. There were also some other things I had to really focus on, such as my first week match-up in fantasy hockey playoffs. Thankfully, I pulled that out at the very end, thanks to my opponent starting Ned against the Penguins in that 12 goal game. Phew.

Strengths of the week:

• PPP were very successful and selective

• Great performance on over player props

• Value finding gained some profit for us

Power play points worked out each time they were bet this week, thanks to the Seattle Kraken. On the first night, we went with a power-play point for Clayton Keller against Seattle. He cashed in by the 2nd period. On Saturday night, we did cut it close, but Anze Kopitar brought us the W. This was also against Seattle. I think in these cases, it was a trend of Seattle playing very poorly on the penalty kill which made the bets very profitable. I have always liked playing power-play points, but you really have to be careful. I've learned that you need to bet the team's best power-play performers and not just someone with odds higher than +750. This is because you may only get a chance or two for each team you bet on for the game. I have bet on some players that would only get 1 minute of skating time on the power-play for the whole game. It's tricky, but make sure you do the research to ENSURE the player you are betting on is unquestionably on the first unit. A few times before, I made the mistake of betting on someone that was then shifted to the 2nd unit at the last minute. That's the worst feeling, because that 2nd unit may only have 30-40 seconds to play with on each chance. They may not even get an offensive face-off at all. Finally, I do like this method of scanning many other sites for good value and checking in with sharper sports betters to see what they are taking. Any odd boosts are profitable and in the long-term, it will cause you to win more money.