NHL Hockey Betting: Ottawa Senators at Montreal Canadiens
The Montreal Canadiens need a win in the worst way. It wasn’t that long ago that the Atlantic Division race was as good as over. The Canadiens got off to a record breaking start this season but have been playing .500 hockey ever since. Bigger problem–injuries to all world goaltender Carey Price and a slew of forwards including Devante Smith-Pelly, Torrey Mitchell and Brendan Gallagher. Since they went out the Habs’ offense has sputtered and rookie goaltender Mike Condon–now the starter with Price on the shelf–seems to be wearing down under the heavy workload. So far the team has insisted that they’re not going to trade for goaltending help but with the only other option being Dustin Tokarski they may eventually have to. Tokarski will get the start tonight for no other reason than he’s the best of a couple of bad options right now. He played reasonably well last time out in Detroit and Condon definitely could use the rest.
Providing the opposition tonight are the Ottawa Senators currently in third place in the Atlantic Division three points back of second place Detroit and six back of the first place Habs. Ottawa has been decent this year and are 6-4-0 in the near term. Montreal is 5-4-1 but they’ve lost four straight and five of six. As if the Canadiens didn’t have enough problems their next five games are against the Western Conference including a Central Division road trip to Dallas, Nashville and Minnesota along with home games against San Jose and Los Angeles.
This has been a very hard fought, evenly matched series for years. Montreal holds a narrow 9-8-0 series lead over the past three season but the teams have split eight games at the Bell Centre. The teams have split two games this year with each winning on the road. The risk in Montreal is that the team is starting to lose confidence in their ability which is a terrible situation for a coach. At any rate, you simply can’t do anything with the Habs as -135 home favorites. In a dead even series we’ll back the road underdog in better form.
BET OTTAWA SENATORS +125 OVER MONTREAL CANADIENS
