NHL YTD: 14-18 -6.82
Been a brutal NHL run trying to fine tune my power numbers in this shortened season and an NHL season in which blindly betting unders would have served quite profitable up to this point in time. However, I don’t condone blindly betting anything as the time proven method of handicapping your games is the best way to be profitable in the long run. As a result, I haven’t dabbled in the NHL as much as in prior seasons, because it’s easier to get a read on smaller cards than cards jam packed with action. Then again, I think I’ve seen enough tendencies and have re-worked my spreadsheets to factor in less power plays and less scoring so I’m going to try to isolate my best bets going forward.
I’ve mainly been focussing on soccer given that the referees don’t put their whistles away, don’t look the other way when there’s blatant obstruction lol
Just some quick comments about the NHL, scoring is down across the league. After the NHL made those changes with obstruction we got an increase in scoring but slowly but surely we are seeing a lot of 5’s again as totals and it won’t be long at this pace until we start seeing 4.5’s again as we did prior to the changes… then again, the rules are there but the referees prefer not to call them. I find there’s no more consistency in NHL officiating which has affected my appreciation for the game. The reality is that the product is really diluted with fringe players and as a result, we get many defensive, trap style games that really account for boring experiences when watching these games.
How’s this for a rule change… when a player is deliberately trying to freeze the puck between his skates in the opponent’s end to kill time, we know that referees keep yelling “play the puck” or “move it” .. what I’d like to see is when a player tries to freeze the puck in the opponents end, the play should be whistled dead and the faceoff goes back to the other end of the rink. So in essence, as an example, if let’s say, Toronto is playing Florida, Toronto tries to kill time by keeping the puck pinned to the boards in the Florida end and won’t play the puck as per the referees instructions…. The play is whistled, and the puck moved back to the Toronto end as punishment for trying to waste time by not moving the puck.
Anyways, that’s not the intent of the post … sorry for rambling ….. these are just observations.
On to tonight’s plays: ALL PLAYS 2 UNITS/WIN 2 UNITS UNLESS SPECIFIED
1. Buffalo v Montreal over 5.5 +115
Enroth gets the start in goal tonight for the Sabres. Price has started to show some signs of fatigue with his GAA increasing to 2.75 over his last 5 games. These two teams match up against each other in what should be an open game like the previous meetings. Enroth has a 3.93 GAA on the road this year and a career 3.23 GAA on the road. The Habs have been scoring of late and they are one of the few teams trending over the total this season (16-12 over). More importantly, they’ve played over the total in 11 of their last 13 home games off a road game. Buffalo is 5-2-2 to the over their last 9 games and Enroth has seen his last 9 games go 6-2-1 “over”.
2. Florida v Carolina over 5.5 + 101
Reports indicate that Markstrom gets the start tonight. Big deal, he’s 1-3-1 with a 3.41 GAA and .875 SV% this season and even if the Panthers throw a late switch and decide to go with Clemmenson it won’t chage my power rating for this gae. Clemmenson’s 2-5-2 with an NHL-high 4.14 GAA. He's gone 1-5-0 with a 3.42 mark in six career games at Carolina. Florida has allowed 4 or more goals in 6 of their last 10 and 3 or more in 9 of their last 10. They have a crappy defence and this looks like a good game for Carolina to break out of what is a minor scoring slump at the moment. Carolina has been getting a lot of shots on goal of late but they’ve scored only 1 goal in their last 2 games and 2 goals in the game before that. I look for Carolina’s offence to explode for 4 goals tonight and if the price on their TT over 2.5 wasn’t at -172 I would have bet it. Best I stick with the game over at plus money but I expect this to move to favourite status by game time.
Florida is 11-3 over the total the last two seasons off a 1 goal loss the last 2 seasons. If we take that number and look at their 1 goal losses AT HOME, they are 7-1 in subsequent games over that same stretch.
Florida is 4-0 when playing with 2 day’s rest this season and Carolina is 3-2 with no rest having played last night.
I am Currently looking over some more and will post them if I play them.
Hot Forum Topics
