NHL Betting Picks: Los Angeles Kings at Columbus Blue Jackets

Added on Mar 11, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NHL

Big night of NHL betting action on Friday as the regular season heads into the stretch run. In this post we’ll take a look at a Western Conference game between the Columbus Blue Jackets and Los Angeles Kings. The Kings are trying to hold on to the 8th and final playoff spot in the West–they’ve got a 1 point lead over 9th place Nashville and a 2 point advantage over Anaheim and Minnesota. Columbus is starting to fade and are currently tied for 12th with the St. Louis Blues.

Los Angeles Kings at Columbus Blue Jackets
March 11, 2011 4:05 PM Pacific

The Columbus Blue Jackets haven’t played badly of late but they’ve been losing games nevertheless. They’ve lost 6 straight and 7 of their last 10 though 5 of their last 6 defeats were by a single goal. This is a bad tactical matchup for them to turn things around. The Kings are a feisty and defensively superior side that is able to outwork most opponents. Los Angeles is coming off a big upset victory over the Red Wings in Detroit and have won 8 of their last 13 games. Los Angeles has the #6 scoring defense in the NHL compared to the Jackets’ #22 defense. The Kings don’t score a lot of goals but neither do the Blue Jackets–Los Angeles ranks #21 in scoring offense (2.66 goals per game) and Columbus #20 (2.71 goals per game). We look for the Kings to take two points here over a snakebit Jackets team.

Surprisingly, despite the strong defensive play of Los Angeles this game has a strong bias to the Over. In 12 road games with a 5 total this season L.A. has gone Over in 9. Columbus has gone Over in 5 of 7 home games with a total of 5. Jackets’ defense looking pretty shoddy of late with 17 goals against in their last four games–all Over verdicts against the total. Head to head, Columbus and Los Angeles have gone Over in 4 straight including all three meetings this season with an average of 8.33 goals per contest. We’ll take the better team looking to hold on to a playoff spot in the wild West and go Over the total as we expect a surprisingly high number of goals considering the teams involved.

Bet Los Angeles Kings -120 over Columbus Blue Jackets
Bet Los Angeles/Columbus Over 5 -135