NHL Hockey Betting: Philadelphia Flyers at Montreal Canadiens
Boy, things are getting ugly in Montreal. It was bad enough as the team’s season swirled down the drain with an injury to starting goaltender Carey Price. It got worse when the media in Montreal started to get wind that he wasn’t nearly as close to a return as the team was letting on and that they were ‘keeping hope alive’ in a Price comeback for ‘marketing reasons’. It’s even uglier as Michel Therien threw PK Subban under the bus on Wednesday night’s for the team’s 3-2 loss at Colorado. The Habs are enduring a nightmare season and every day there seems to be something new to add to the grease fire.
Montreal enters this game having lost three straight and 7 of their last 10. They’re now 8 points out of the Eastern Conference’s final wild card spot so there’s still some hope they can qualify for the postseason but they’ve shown little to suggest that they’ll put together the run of play necessary to do it. Besides, it would be a very dubious consolation at best considering that they had been all but handed the Presidents’ Trophy after the first week of the season. The Flyers are in the same boat–minus the record setting start- and are two points ahead of the Flyers in the playoff standings.
Head to head, this has been very much a home team dominated series. The Flyers and Canadiens have split the last eight matchups but Montreal is 3-0-0 at the Bell Centre. The Flyers have won both meetings this year–both on home ice–beating Montreal 4-3 on January 5 and 4-2 on February 2. Flyers have been at their worst against opponents with losing records putting up a mark of 8-17 against teams under .500. And, for whatever reason, the Habs have been money in the bank when playing on Friday’s this year. In a season where they’re in the red in just about every other situational breakdown Montreal is 5-1 +3.9 units playing on Friday. That means very little in this matchup and although Philadelphia isn’t much of a team either we’ll gladly take the plus money against the hapless Canadiens.
BET PHILADELPHIA FLYERS +110 OVER MONTREAL CANADIENS
