NHL Hockey Betting: Nashville Predators at Anaheim Ducks
One team will go on in the Stanley Cup playoffs after tonight and the other team will go home as the Nashville Predators travel to the Honda Center to take on the Anaheim Ducks. This has been a wild and unpredictable series since the outset. Nashville won the first two games on Anaheim’s home ice–by identical 3-2 scores–to head back to Tennessee with a 2-0 lead. Anaheim responded with wins in Games 3,4 and 5 to take a 3-2 lead in the series. Facing elimination, the Predators played arguably their best game of the entire season at the Bridgestone Arena to win Game Six and set up tonight’s ‘winner take all’ Game Seven.
The nature of the teams involved make this series all the more unpredictable. The Ducks’ poor start was one of the biggest stories of the early part of the NHL season. Anaheim went 1-9-1 to start the season and looked to be headed nowhere this season. They turned it around late in 2015 and were one of the best teams in hockey during the second half of the season. Even so, they never really got going offensively.
The Predators were just unpredictable this season. Game to game they could either look like Stanley Cup contenders or AHL rejects. Goaltender Pekka Rinne was likewise an enigma–he could stop a barrage of shots to shut down an opponent one game and let in several ‘soft’ goals in the next. That’s what makes it so hard to handicap anything involving the Nashville Predators. You never know which team and which Pekka Rinne you’re going to get on a given night.
One thing the Predators’ unlikely win in Game Six did do was put the pressure squarely back on the Ducks. The Nashville fans didn’t expect to win this series and if they’re being honest didn’t expect to win Game Six. The Ducks’ fans may have been looking past Nashville from the outset. This is the first Game Seven in Predators’ franchise history but the Ducks have played in four in the last ten years–and lost them all. We’ll take the Predators at the value price.
BET NASHVILLE PREDATORS +150 OVER ANAHEIM DUCKS
