NHL Hockey Betting: Montreal Canadiens at Carolina Hurricanes

The Montreal Canadiens season is winding down and after ‘officially’ ruling what seems like half of their roster out for the season due to injury may have ‘thrown in the towel’. The team has made official the fact that Carey Price isn’t returning along with Brian Flynn, Jeff Petry, Tom Gilbert, P.K. Subban, Mark Barberio, Victor Bartley and Nathan Beaulieu and Lucas Lessio. And when a team is without their entire defensive corps and top goaltender it’s not a good thing. Credit to the Habs for continuing to scrap late in the season but there’s no other way of describing this year other than the ‘season from hell’.

Carolina has been up and down but their play after the first of the year has given the franchise some hope for the future. The team looked to be going nowhere after a shabby start to the campaign but thanks to the contributions of the young and unheralded players on their roster they played well in the early part of 2016 and even had a bit of a ‘playoff run’ that ultimately proved unsuccessful. Carolina continues to ‘tread water’ as the season winds to a close with a 4-3-3 record in their last ten games.

Hard to see where the motivation will come from on the Montreal side. They still have the ability to ‘get up’ for big name opponents but the flip side of that is that they continue to struggle against losing teams. They’re 14-22 -12.6 units against opponents with losing records this season and have lost 13 of the last 20 in this spot. Carolina is 19-21 against losing opponents and that’s more acceptable–it suggests that they’re competitive against opponents at their skill level.

If Montreal is going to ‘get up’ for a game it won’t be this one–it’ll be their home finale on Saturday against Tampa Bay. They beat the Lightning 3-0 in Florida on March 31 and if this battered team does make a stand it’ll be in front of their home fans. Montreal has won 6 of the last 8 against Carolina but given the current state of these teams we’d rather back the home team in this spot.

BET CAROLINA HURRICANES -135 OVER MONTREAL CANADIENS