NHL Hockey Betting: Edmonton Oilers at Arizona Coyotes
We sound this refrain just about every day but it’s hard not to–the struggles of Canadian hockey teams this season is mind boggling. The Ottawa Senators will finish with the best record among Canada’s NHL teams and they’re 34-31-8 and won’t make the playoffs. Last place in both conferences are held by Canadian teams. In the Western Conference the bottom four slots are all Canadian teams. Things are marginally better in the East where three of the bottom five teams are Canadian. It’s become downright depressing to watch hockey with Canada’s teams in such miserable shape.
One of the few bright spots has been watching the development of Edmonton superstar Connor McDavid. He’s gone from a visibly nervous 18 year old in the first week of the season to arguably the most exciting and dynamic player in the NHL. Even with his shoulder injury that cost him nearly two months of playing time McDavid is a strong contender for rookie of the year. He enters tonight’s game with 14 goals and 26 assists for 40 points in 38 games. And slowly but surely his long suffering team is showing improvement. Former Rangers’ goaltender Cam Talbot has been playing very good hockey over the past six weeks and Taylor Hall has revitalized his career this season.
Arizona has some nice young talent but they’ve got a lot of work to do. At one point, they were in contention at the top of the Pacific Division but then the ‘grown man’ teams Anaheim and Los Angeles took over and the Coyotes are now 11 points out of the final playoff spot held by the Colorado Avalanche. They’re 4-5-1 in their last 10 games and just .500 at home (18-14-4). Edmonton is still a work in progress but they’re still putting up a solid effort on most nights. They lost last time out to Colorado (3-2) but never stopped battling, making it a one goal game despite trailing 2-0 after two periods. That kind of scrap can win games against this class. Coyotes beat Edmonton 4-0 at home in early February and the Oilers might like a measure of revenge. In any case, they’re playing harder than the Coyotes at this point and that should give them the win.
BET EDMONTON OILERS +110 OVER ARIZONA COYOTES
