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Golden Knights behind Avalanche in NHL season point totals

The Golden Knights and Avalanche tied for the most points in the NHL’s shortened 56-game 2020-21 regular season with 82 apiece.

Las Vegas sportsbooks project the Western Conference rivals to lead the league in points again in 2021-22, when the NHL will return to an 82-game schedule.

Colorado, which won the President’s Trophy by virtue of a tiebreaker, has the NHL’s highest season point total at the Westgate SuperBook with 110½.

The Knights, who eliminated the Avalanche in the second round of the playoffs, have the second-highest total at 107½.

Colorado leads the way with a point total of 109½ at Caesars and Station Casinos. The Knights have a total of 106½ at Station and 105½ at Caesars.

“The Knights clearly play in the weakest division in the NHL,” Red Rock Resort sportsbook director Chuck Esposito said of the Pacific. “There’s such a huge gap between them and the second-place team, and the bottom teams in the Pacific all drafted in the lottery.

“Even the expansion Kraken are projected to have more points than the existing teams in the Pacific.”

The Golden Knights are -225 favorites at Station to win the Pacific Division. The Edmonton Oilers are the 7-1 second choice at the SuperBook, followed by Seattle (12-1), the Calgary Flames (20-1), Los Angeles Kings (20-1), Vancouver Canucks (16-1), San Jose Sharks (100-1) and Anaheim Ducks (500-1).

The Ducks have the league’s third-lowest point total at the SuperBook at 71½. The only teams with lower totals are the Buffalo Sabres (63½) and Arizona Coyotes (66½), who are 75-1 long shots to win the Central Division, where the Avalanche are -225 favorites at Station.

“You can make a case that the Avalanche are the best team in hockey,” Esposito said. “They’ve been on an ascent the last few years. They’re extremely well-balanced. They have two of the best players in the league in Cale Makar and Nathan MacKinnon, and there’s a little drop-off in their division as well.”

The Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars are tied for the 10-1 second choice at the SuperBook to win the Central.

Here are the point totals for the rest of the Pacific Division: Oilers (97½), Flames (90½), Canucks (90½), Kraken (88½), Kings (86½) and Sharks (80½).

Less than two weeks before the Knights’ preseason opener and less than a month before their regular season opener, they’re 5-1 co-favorites with the Avalanche at the SuperBook and Station to win the Stanley Cup, and they’re +550 favorites at Caesars over Colorado (6-1).

Free bets for app outage

Bettors trying to place wagers on their William Hill and Caesars Sportsbook mobile apps were out of luck NFL Sunday morning.

There was an outage on the apps in Nevada that began more than 30 minutes before the 10 a.m. kickoffs of nine NFL season openers and prevented bettors from accessing their accounts until after the games had started.

On Sunday afternoon, the books offered two $25 free sports bets to their customers and apologized for the inconvenience via email.

The books added the first $25 free bet to each account Sunday. Bettors have until Sept. 23 to use it. A second $25 free bet will be added to accounts Sept. 25. Bettors will have until Sept. 30 to use it.

Caesars Entertainment purchased William Hill for $4 billion in April.

Contact reporter Todd Dewey at tdewey@reviewjournal.com. Follow @tdewey33 on Twitter.

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