Today's Free Picks for
BEST LINES: Pinnacle -½ +122 BET 365 -½ +120 SportsInteraction -½ +120 5DIMES -½ +120
Posted at 11:00 AM EST.
7:05 PM EST. Regulation only. One could spot 30 cents with the Jackets with OT included, as it’s the bargain favorite of the day but if we thought we needed OT to dispose of this beatable intruder, we wouldn’t be stepping in anyway. Washington is getting far too much credit by a market that sees wins and losses only and we’re here to insist that Washington’s winning ways are hanging by a thread. The Caps do not win by outplaying the opposition, they win as a result of great fortune in terms of shooting and save percentages but that has started to even out.
Over the past three weeks, Washington ranks 28th in xGF%. That puts them below Ottawa and Detroit and just above Chicago. They also rank between 19th and 25th in almost every other category too. The Caps return to the East Coast after a brief two-game trip through Vegas and Arizona. They split those two games but a trip to the desert is not an easy one and the game against Vegas was perhaps one of the most intense games we’ve seen this year. It’s also unusual for a team to return from the West Coast and not return home.
The Jackets on the other hand are truly legit. It’s a rare game that they get outplayed or outhot in. When they lose it is only because the other goaltender was better than theirs and not because they got outplayed. When they lost 9-6 to the Flames last week, Calgary scored nine goals on 28 shots on net. The Jackets rank higher than Washington in every skill-based category while the Caps rank second in the league in the luck-driven PDO category. Some say, “We would rather be lucky than good” but we’ll say we’ll back the legit team that figures to be sky high to get a crack at the champs while the champs just had a vacation in the desert and have nothing to prove yet. The Cup hangover is real but the results wrongly suggest that the Caps aren’t suffering.
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Our Pick
COLUMBUS -½ +112 (Risking 2 units - To Win: 2.24)