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Posted at 11:30 AM EST.

6:05 PM EST. Regulation only. The Blackhawks have dropped eight of nine and have been out-chanced and outshot in all but one of those games. Chicago suffers from a lack of depth and the worst defence in the Western Conference. Once loaded with high-end talented, the roster has been depleted and the high-end talent is now limited to Patrick Kane (13 goals and 19 assists), Jonathan Toews (13 goals, 11 assists) and Alex DeBrincat (11 goals, 11 assists). Corey Crawford was limited to 28 games last season because of a concussion but he has struggled this season. Crawford has lost his last seven starts and has allowed 30 goals in that stretch. He has a 5-13-1 record with a 3.22 goals-against average and a .902 save percentage. In terms of analytics, and without going through all the numbers, Chicago is weak across the board on both ends of the ice, thus its 9-21 record is truly legit. When looking at how the Blackhawks have performed against some of the better competition this year, it’s ugly. Chicago is 0-8 against top-10 competition and 2-14 against top-16 competition.    

The Habs dropped six of seven before back-to-back wins over Ottawa. Beating the Sens twice does not give them much credibility, thus, Montreal’s funk still sticks out and we now get them at a real bargain. Forget the losing streak or funk, as it was all bad-luck driven. The Habs are dominating games and were dominating during that losing streak too. In Montreal’s 3-1 loss to San Jose, Montreal outshot the Sharks 41-29 and in a recent 2-1 loss to Carolina, they outshot the ‘Canes 49-22. Over the past three weeks covering anywhere between 10-12 games for all 31 teams, Montreal ranks #1 on Corsi For % during five-on-five play. Over that same span, the Canadiens rank 8th in High Danger Chances For and 5th in High Danger Against. We may have also forgotten how good Shea Weber is and since he’s been back, the Canadiens have been even better. The return of speedy and talented Paul Byron has also added more scoring depth, as Byron continues to be one of those really good players that gets little recognition. He has two goals and two assists in the four games since his return. Montreal is playing at an extremely high level. The difference between Montreal’s early season success and recent failures (losing six of seven) was all in their shooting percentages. The Habs had a very high shooting percentage in their first 15 games but had fallen well below the league average since. Those low percentages have been snapped in the past two games with five goals in each game. The Canadiens went 0-for-3 on the power play in Ottawa Thursday and rank 29th in the NHL with a success rate of 14.1 per cent. Power-play percentages are another luck-driven stat, thus the Canadiens figure to see a correction to the good on their PP too. This is the steal of the day in the NHL and therefore it will be our only wager in the NHL.

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