NHL Betting Preview: Dallas Stars at Tampa Bay Lightning

Added on Oct 18, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NHL

We’ll wrap up our look at Monday’s NHL betting card by taking a look down south as the Tampa Bay Lightning host the Dallas Stars. Dallas has been a surprise of the early season, posting a 4-0 record which includes impressive home wins over St. Louis and Detroit. Tampa Bay is 3-1 but off a lopsided 6-0 loss to the Florida Panthers.

Dallas Stars at Tampa Bay Lighting
October 18, 2010 4:30 PM Pacific

We’re not sold on this Tampa Bay team–they showed a number of weaknesses against Florida and most significantly were just outworked and outhustled for 60 minutes. Dallas may lack the high powered offense of their recent vintage teams, but they play a similar style of hard working, gritty hockey. The Stars rank #4 in goals per game, and are a respectable 12th in goals against per game. They’re getting solid goaltending from former Atlanta Thrasher Kari Lehtonen while Tampa has yet to settle on a top goaltender with Dan Ellis and Mike Smith splitting time between the pipes.

Tampa Bay has been one of the biggest money losers in hockey since 2008 costing bettors -29.6 units. They’ve been at their worst against teams with winning record posting a record of 23-50 for -14.6 units in that timeframe. It’s not like the Stars have had much trouble with Tampa–Dallas is on a 13-4 run in the series overall and has won 7 of the last 8 meetings in the ‘Cigar City’. Dallas is still underrated among the betting public, while Tampa is overpriced in our opinion. We’ll gladly take the resurgent Stars as short priced dogs and look for them to continue their undefeated start to the season.

Bet Dallas Stars +110 over Tampa Bay Lightning