OPTIMAL BET · THE SLATE

Tonight's board: 10 MLB games · 6 NHL games

A day-baseball-heavy MLB card leads into the final night of the NHL regular season. The Eastern Conference playoff bracket is already locked; the West still has seeding to sort, and the MLB early-season picture is just starting to take shape under the new ABS challenge system.

Early-season Thursday · 10 games

Three weeks in, the Dodgers are chasing a third straight title and the Twins and Dodgers sit atop their leagues. Today's board is front-loaded with getaway-day matinees before a late West Coast pair.

Yankee Stadium · Bronx, NY

The market has New York laying -1.5 with a 9.5 total and -280 on the money line. The model lands slightly over on total at a p50 of 9.62 and softens the favorite to a 67.8% home win, so the biggest disagreement is on the Yankees' win probability rather than the run environment.

Max Fried is the single biggest lever: his strikeout projection carries a p90 of 10.1 against a p50 of 6.1, the widest ceiling on the card. If Fried hits his upper tail, Yankees' 5.82 projected runs plays down and the total stays just under.

Regular season finale · 6 games

Game 82 for every team on the ice. The East bracket is set; in the West, the Pacific and wild-card order is still live — Edmonton, Vegas, Anaheim and Los Angeles are bunched close enough that tonight's results can still reshape first-round matchups before Saturday's puck drop.

Rogers Place · Edmonton, AB

Market: Edmonton -1.5, total 6.5, EDM -320 on the money line. The model lands almost exactly on the total at a p50 of 6.48 and pegs the Oilers at a 72.6% home win — a touch below the -320 implied, meaning the model sees marginal value on the Canucks side of the ledger rather than the total.

Connor McDavid is the lever the whole game swings on: p50 of 2 points and 4 shots on goal, with a p90 of 4 points and 6 shots. No Vancouver skater projects above a p50 of 1 point, so the Canucks' only realistic path to a cover is McDavid finishing near his p10.