NHL Hockey Betting: Stanley Cup Playoffs for May 24, 2016
The Pittsburgh Penguins will try to live and fight another day as they play Game 6 against the Tampa Bay Lightning:
PITTSBURGH PENGUINS AT TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING:
Hockey is a brutal sport. I’m not just talking physicality. It can give players, coaches and teams a pounding mentally and emotionally. Just a week ago, it looked like everything was going the Pittsburgh Penguins’ way. Now they’re one game from elimination. A week or so ago, Matt Murray was a phenom and the obvious ‘goalie of the future’. Now they can’t decide which goalie they want to start with their season on the line. Even the fans are feeling the pressure with an apparent schism among Penguins boosters as to who should start Game Six.
Now Evgeni Malkin has ‘guaranteed’ a Game Six win. Of course players in every sport have done this ever since Joe Namath and it doesn’t always work. The reality is that the Penguins have played very poorly in two straight games. They’ve lost defenseman Trevor Daley to a broken ankle and he’s a very important component of this team. He’s second in ice time among defensemen behind Kris Letang. He’s the kind of player that won’t make headlines or be covered on ‘Sportscenter’ but who is extremely important to this team.
While Pittsburgh looks shellshocked and indecisive about what they need to do to get back on track the Lightning look confident. Championship teams find a way to win during the grind of the Stanley Cup playoffs and that’s exactly what Tampa has been doing. One thing that’s working in Tampa Bay’s favor is that their offense is a ‘many headed monster’. In Pittsburgh, obviously the rest of the offense lines up behind Crosby and Malkin. Tampa’s offense comes from all over the place. Tyler Johnson and Nikita Kucherov have been especially effective during this playoff series. Kucherov has more goals than anyone in the postseason (11) while Johnson is #5 with 7. Alex Killorn, Jonathan Drouin, Ondrej Palat have also been productive.
It was a week or so ago where the mainstream sports media–and most of the hockey media–collectively had a panic attack over Ben Bishop’s injury. The consensus was that Tampa Bay’s season was over and they should just forfeit the rest of the series to Pittsburgh and go home. Actually, they didn’t say that but they definitely had a fatalistic tone. It takes an especially stupid person to react this way when Tampa Bay was playing Pittsburgh who essentially had the same thing happen when Marc-Andre Fleury went down late in the regular season. And Tampa Bay reacted the same way–by putting their talented young goaltending prospect in net, in the Bolts’ case it was Andrei Vasilevskiy. There are still some media types writing articles referring to the ‘shorthanded’ Lightning battling through injuries. Not so much–they knew Steven Stamkos was going to be out before the start of the playoffs. He’s a free agent after this season and there’s a good chance he won’t be back. Otherwise, the only significant injury is Bishop and Vasilevskiy is doing well in his fill in role in net.
I’ve talked a lot about the line valuation in this series and what’s really strange is how there’s been little to no correction as the series has progressed. Pittsburgh has been a huge favorite at home and a -130 to -150 favorite at Amalie Arena. I had no idea that Pittsburgh was such a ‘public’ team. The Lightning were a decent home team during the regular season (25-13-3)and they’ve now won 11 of their 15 playoff games. The only way to justify this pricing is ‘public perception’ since the pricing is strongly Pittsburgh and it hasn’t really moved despite the ebb and flow of this series.
Tampa Bay has been the value side throughout this series. They shouldn’t have been +175 to win the series before it started, they shouldn’t be home underdogs and Pittsburgh shouldn’t be a 2-1 favorite against them on their home ice. Realistically, this series was at worst a toss up and there were several strong edges for Tampa Bay. If you’d bet the Bolts blindly throughout you’d be up 2.7 units. It shouldn’t be that simple but in this series it is. One team is just priced incorrectly. Or maybe it’s priced correctly to achieve the goal of the bookmaker–good ‘two way’ action. It sure isn’t reflective of the relative quality of these two teams.
Much is being made of the Penguins facing elimination, ‘having their backs against the wall’ or what have you. It’s obviously a ‘must win’ situation for Pittsburgh since if they don’t win they’re done for the year. But Tampa has their own goal–they don’t want to play a Game 7 on the road. Handicapping 101 says you go against the team in the ‘must win’ spot and particularly if you’re getting ‘plus money’ on the other side. That’s what we’re going to do just like we’ve been doing this whole series.
BET TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING +125 OVER PITTSBURGH PENGUINS