Carolina @ Edmonton
Edmonton +101 over Carolina

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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

Edmonton +101 over Carolina

9:00 PM EST. This is not a bet against the Carolina Hurricanes. By every five-on-five measure there is, Carolina is a machine: 60% of the shot attempts, 61% of the expected goals, a 375-246 shot advantage through 11 games, eight wins in their last nine and a 6-1 record on the road. In a vacuum, the Hurricanes deserve to be favored tonight and then some. Games are not played in a vacuum, though, and no team in hockey is built to survive the spot Carolina walks into at Rogers Place. This is the Hurricanes' 11th straight game in a different city. The Western Canada swing alone has run Winnipeg on Saturday, Calgary on Sunday, Vancouver on Tuesday and now Edmonton, a fourth game in six nights to finish it off. Carolina's whole identity is legs: a relentless forecheck, wave after wave of pressure, everybody skating downhill for 60 minutes. That is exactly the style that dies at the end of a trip like this, and it dies fastest against the one team you cannot afford to be half a stride slow against.

Edmonton, meanwhile, is home, rested since Tuesday, and whole for the first time all season. The Oilers are 7-1-1, winners of seven of their last eight, and scoring an NHL-best 4.56 goals a game, all of it without Ryan Nugent-Hopkins, who makes his season debut tonight in the second-line center spot. Zach Hyman is already back. Connor McDavid has 26 points in nine games. Granted, Edmonton's five-on-five numbers are ordinary and a shooting percentage north of 18% will cool off eventually, but eventually is not tonight, and it is not against a visitor running on fumes with a thinned-out forward group. Carolina remains without Jordan Staal and Taylor Hall, Mark Jankowski has left the trip altogether, and while Seth Jarvis making his season debut helps the Hurricanes, one winger does not fix 11 cities in 11 games.

That is the part of this the market has flat-out refused to price. Carolina is -125, on the road, in the final game of a Western Canada swing, at the end of the longest run of one-night stands in the league, against the highest-scoring team in hockey, which is rested, at home, and getting a top-six center back in the lineup. Strip the jerseys off and price the spot alone, and Edmonton is the favorite in this game. The Oilers are nobody's idea of an underdog at home when they're healthy, and tonight they finally are.

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Our Pick

Edmonton +101 (Risking 2 units - To Win: 2.02)

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