Julie’s Football Club (+140)
YeHooligan’s Heroes (-180)
Over 5.0 (-130)
Under 5.0 (-110)
Notes: Two teams who surprisingly finished in the bottom two spots face off in the play-in game. While I don’t think they had the best of drafts, attendance was a far bigger problem for each team during the season as Ave missed a good chunk of early season games due to the seemingly never-ending parade of Tuesday night Jewish holidays while orange has had a full lineup for maybe one game all year. The result, in a parity-driven draft league, was bottom two seeding for two veteran teams that maybe deserved better but in the words of William Munny, deserve’s got nothing to do with it. So what do the fans think?
Close to a dead heat but like the sportsbook, fans have green as an ever so slight favorite. Complicating the situation is that orange may have a playoff sub but thus far it is TBD as Burns and Nate (great name for a 50s superhero duo) have thus far been unresponsive. Even if orange had one of them, they’d be the underdog to a full-strength green team. The curse of orange returns for the defending champs as green moves on by multiple goals.
Red Rockets (+160)
MelRose Place (-220)
Over 5.5 (-135)
Under 5.5 (-105)
Notes: Red Rockets were the other team that got truly hosed by attendance this year as Corey (non-goalie edition) hasn’t played in well over a month. They’ll have Kev in his place for the playoffs but they also won’t have Scotty tonight. He’ll be running the bench but unable to play which is just a massive blow for red. They would’ve already been underdogs but Scott and Corey are two enormous losses. Speed players like Austin, Brita and sub Kev will give them a shot in this one, but MelRose has a powerful lineup coming and should advance here.
Football Club / Heroes (+120)
My Cup Size Is Stanley (-160)
Over 5.5 (-120)
Under 5.5 (-120)
Notes: Cup Size has been a tale of two teams all season. They won games 8-1, 6-2 and 7-0 and have the 3rd highest goal differential in the league (generally a pretty good predictor of future performance) but only finished a middling 5th out of 9 teams. They’ve been pretty much carried offensively by a potentially MVP caliber season from Hicks but tonight he’ll be missing one of his linemates as Eric is out for the playoffs. Still, with Source, Ramy and Stabel up front and the guy they traded up for in round 3 to select, AJ, between the pipes black has to be considered the favorite over whichever team advances. Green did beat them in the teams’ only regular season meeting though.
Rockets / MelRose (EVEN)
Shooting Blancs (-145)
Over 5.5 (-120)
Under 5.5 (-120)
Notes: If the winner of the 6/7 is MelRose this game is basically a dead heat. If Rockets win they’ll be underdogs due to their insanely depleted roster, but will have a puncher’s chance. In any case, the safe bet is on white to come out strong in their only game of the night and advance. Public agrees. Not sure how to feel about that…
Football Club / Heroes / Cup Size (+120)
The Muskies (-160)
Over 5.5 (-120)
Under 5.5 (-120)
Notes: In sports betting, when a ton of public action is on one side you generally never want to be on that side. That said, public is massively on the Muskies in this one, way more than they were on Blancs, and I still have to agree with them. True, I’ve also had purple ranked as a championship frontunner since the preseason lines due to their powerful 1-2 forward combo of Jack and Miles (seriously, who let both of these guys on the same team?) but they also have the best girls in the league and Mahoney slamming beers in the penalty box each game. Trappy game so I’m not betting on it either way but would be surprised to see purple go down this early. Jack will hopefully tell his team that a win is mandatory like he did last week and they will hopefully actually respond with a win, unlike last week.
