NHL Hockey Betting: Edmonton Oilers at Columbus Blue Jackets

The Edmonton Oilers are playing some of their best hockey we’ve seen this season at the moment and they’ll go for their fourth straight win tonight against the Columbus Blue Jackets at Nationwide Arena. The Oilers were awful for most of February ‘highlighted’ by a 9 loss in 10 games run. After they essentially had their manhood challenged by GM Peter Chiarelli they’ve been playing hard and it’s now paying dividends. They turned in two solid performances in losing causes dropping a pair of 2-1 games at Los Angeles and Anaheim. They’ve dropped down in class and have won three straight against the Islanders at home and Buffalo and Philadelphia on the road by a combined score of 7-2.

They have two games left on this road trip and they’re both ‘winnable’ starting with tonight’s contest against the Blue Jackets. The Jackets are much improved from the sorry team that they were at the start of the season but they’re still highly erratic. They have the advantage of being well rested here–Columbus last played on Monday, February 29 while the Oilers were in action last night. In hockey, however, a layoff of even several days can hurt a team’s timing and finesse. With Edmonton being such a young team the ‘back to back’ situation might be of little relevance here. Plus it’s not like the Oilers have had much trouble with the Jackets of late–Edmonton ripped Columbus 5-1 at home during their early February run of bad play.

Columbus has won 3 of their last 5 games but could be more focused on Saturday’s conference road game at Philadelphia. The Flyers are trying to scrap their way into the postseason and the Jackets could find some vindication for their substandard season by keeping them out. By just looking at the standings, the Oilers are an easy team to look past. But the trick with handicapping is to see when teams’ current form is overachieving or underachieving against their statistical profile. Edmonton is clearly a different team with Connor McDavid in the lineup and they’ve been playing surprisingly good hockey in their own end of late. We’ll take the price with the Oilers.

BET EDMONTON OILERS +155 OVER COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS