NHL Playoff Betting for May 16, 2014
One game on Friday night as the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks play Game 7 with a berth in the Western Conference Finals on the line. One game on Saturday morning as the Montreal Canadiens host the New York Rangers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Finals:
FRIDAY:
LOS ANGELES KINGS AT ANAHEIM DUCKS:
This series has been somewhat bizarre yet closely contested. The Kings won the first two games on the Ducks’ home ice at the Honda Center. Anaheim responded with two straight wins on the Kings’ home ice at the Staples Center and then took Game 5 at home to go up 3-2. Los Angeles managed to avoid elimination with a 2-1 win at home in Game 6 to set up tonight’s Game 7 scenario. In Game 6 the Kings outshot the Ducks 23-22–the first game in the series where the winning team had more shots on goal than the losing team.
Anaheim made a gutsy goaltending change after Game 3, turning the starting job over to recent minor league call up John Gibson. To be fair, the mainstream sports media is making a bigger deal about Gibson’s youth (he’s 20 years old) and lack of NHL experience (he played 3 regular season games and now has 3 playoff starts). Gibson was a 2nd round draft choice of Anaheim in 2011 and was highly touted at the time with some suggesting that the could become the next Martin Brodeur. That remains to be seen, but he’s done very good work in net for the Ducks’ AHL affiliate the Norfolk Admirals. More significantly, the Ducks’ management has been very big on Gibson for most of the year and considered bringing him up before the playoffs. That decision got made for them after Frederik Andersen was injured in Game 3.
Los Angeles has Jonathan Quick in net and he’s no slouch. The Ducks have outplayed the Kings for much of this series, however, and while Quick has the ability to ‘steal’ any game he’s in we’ll go with the home team here in a low scoring game.
BET ANAHEIM DUCKS -120 OVER LOS ANGELES KINGS
BET ANAHEIM/LOS ANGELES UNDER 5 -130
SATURDAY:
NEW YORK RANGERS AT MONTREAL CANADIENS
The Rangers were dead in the water in their Conference Semifinal series against Pittsburgh going down 3-1 and looking completely listless and lacking in intensity. They got an apparent emotional boost from a tragic situation–Martin St. Louis left the team after Game 3 due to the death of his mother. Initially he was expected to miss Game 4 but decided to play and both he and his teammates responded with their most focused and gritty game of the series and that helped propel them to three straight victories and an improbable series win. It’s not easy to carry that kind of emotion from series to series–at the very least there could be a ‘letdown’ following their Game 7 win against the Penguins. The Canadiens also needed 7 games to beat the Boston Bruins but didn’t have the same sort of emotional roller coaster going on–they outplayed Boston for most of the series and were it not for a few unlucky bounces in a couple of games could have ended the series earlier. Montreal has dominated the Rangers in head to head play winning 7 of the last 10 meetings overall including a 5-0 record at the Bell Centre.
BET MONTREAL CANADIENS -120 OVER NEW YORK RANGERS
