NHL Betting Free Picks: Dallas @ Columbus
Added on Feb 04, 2010 by Jack Thurman in
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The sports betting destinations haven’t given us much to work with in terms of NBA action, so we’ll take a look at our NHL betting opportunities for Thursday. The Columbus Blue Jackets have underachieved for much of the season, and on Wednesday it cost head coach Ken Hitchcock his job. Assistant Claude Noel will take over the club on an interim basis for the rest of the year, and despite the poor start still has a shot of piloting the team into the playoffs. Dallas has played reasonably well this year, but they’re still three points out of a playoff spot themselves due to the brutal level of competition in the Western Conference this year:
Dallas Stars at Columbus Blue Jackets
February 2, 4:05 PM Pacific
We look for Columbus to start playing more inspired hockey due to the coaching change. They’re 11 points out of a playoff spot, but with over 20 games remaining in the regular season could make a run at it if they start playing with more intensity. At the very least, Claude Noel could coach himself into the permanent head coaching position should his team go on a run to close out the year.
All it takes to understand the Blue Jackets’ problem is a look at the stat sheet. The Jackets’ offense ranks #20 in goals for per game but even more problematic is their #26 ranking in goals against per game. If you can read between the lines of ‘coach speak’ you’ll see that the team is hoping for a more inspired effort on the defensive end of the ice. First, GM Scott Howson:
“It wasn’t working. The team wasn’t responding to the message. We don’t consider the season lost. We’ll play hard the rest of the season and see what happens.”
Translation: If Claude Noel can get the team to play hard the rest of the way he could very well lose the ‘Interim’ from his title.
For his part, Noel paid his gracious respects to Hitchcock and then noted:
“You’re going to see some changes. But I’m not going to reinvent the game.”
The last straw was a 5-1 loss at Colorado where the Jackets couldn’t score nor keep their opponents from scoring. Although the ‘new coach bounce’ is a time honored handicapping concept we’re not interested in laying favorite money to back a team with only 4 wins in their last 11 games. Instead, we’ll look to play this game Under the total. Columbus had gone Under the total in three straight and four of five prior to the loss to the Avs. Dallas has played a lot of Over games lately, but the recent history of this series has trended Under with 6 of the L10 and 3 of 4 in Columbus going Under the total. Of particular significance is the three games already played between the teams this season, none of which have seen more than five goals scored making it 3 Unders in 3 games this year and four straight overall. With an average total score of 3.67 goals per game this year we’ll look for another defensive battle between the two teams in the Jackets’ first action under their new coach.
Bet Columbus/Dallas UNDER 5′ -115
