Tonight’s Picks: Flyers Have Something To Prove
0-3: Last season’s top 3 Western conference finishers have all started their season’s off with a loss, leaving me 0-3. Detroit had this game in the bag before Chris Mason stood on his head and stole the game back for the Blues. After this afternoon’s games, 5 of 6 games played have been OVER the game total and the underdogs have won 5 of the 6 games. What does this tell you? Well Calgary, Montreal and Washington are all legitimate contenders in their respective conferences and the “underdog” tag might have been a little misleading when looking at the odds. Still, their victories were against excellent contenders and do not go unnoticed.
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Vegas turned this game into a pick-em after Carolina opened as an early favourite and they changed it for good reason. Philly might have had the best offseason of any team in the NHL, bringing in the ever-so-intimidating Chris Pronger, and Ray Emery played a solid preseason with a 1.78 GAA and a .940 SV% in 6 games. Emery is ready to play at this level and Philly needs to prove they are a contender early this year after struggling out of the gate in 2008-09 starting the season 0-6. Philly dominated the Hurricanes last season, going 3-0-1 and is 6-0-1 in their last 7 on the road in Carolina. More notably, Philly played their 4 games against Carolina in November and December, when the Flyers were struggling. Both teams finished in the middle playoff seeds of the Eastern Conference but Philadelphia has made the most significant gains in the offseason.
Pick: Flyers -110 (Take Philly +1.5 at -300 with bet365 if you are feeling less adventurous)