NHL Betting News

The best sports betting websites remember the lessons that the Los Angeles Kings showed everyone last year when the team barely made the playoffs and then won the Stanley Cup. But there is still something demotivating about a team that works so hard to make the playoffs only to find out that it has to meet the best team in the league in the opening round. The Minnesota Wild beat out the Columbus Blue Jackets for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference. For their efforts, the Wild was rewarded with a first round berth against the Chicago Blackhawks. That is not much of a reward for a team that is probably already dog tired.

The Chicago Blackhawks made this shortened season look easy. The sports betting services watched as the Blackhawks got off to one of the best starts in NHL history. The Blackhawks looked like they would stumble for a moment, but Chicago righted the ship and blasted its way to a President’s Trophy win. Every hockey fan knows that the President’s Trophy is the playoff kiss of death. Chicago will run into problems, but it probably will not be until later in the playoffs.

Minnesota Wild

At this point, the on line sports betting experts figure that the only team from the Southeast Division that will make the NHL Eastern Conference playoffs is the division winner. For a while there, it looked like the Winnipeg Jets would be able to sustain their success and hold onto the division lead. But the Jets have once again suffered from a lack of experience and an inability to close out games and win. Winnipeg has fallen to 13 points behind the Washington Capitals in the Southeast Division standings and that leaves Washington as the only Southeast team to make the playoffs.

The Montreal Canadiens are still locked in a desperate struggle against the Boston Bruins to see which team will win the Northeast Division. The sportsbook agents also figure that the Canadiens are much more interested in keeping the Bruins down than catching the Pittsburgh Penguins for first place in the conference. Montreal knows that a spot in the top three of the conference means at least one, and possibly two, playoff series with home ice advantage. When the Canadiens are playing well, there is nothing like home ice advantage in Montreal. It is when the Canadiens are not playing well that things get touchy with the fans.

The New York Rangers are not meeting the betting public’s expectations this season. After an impressive regular season in 2011-12, the Rangers struggled in the playoffs. The problem was that the team could not score goals when it needed to. In order to solve that problem, New York brought in Rick Nash from the Columbus Blue Jackets. Nash has not solved the problem and the Rangers are still struggling to score goals. At this point, the Rangers are drifting in and out of eighth place in the Eastern Conference standings, which means that every game the Rangers play counts.

The sports betting online experts want to say that the only way the Carolina Hurricanes can make the playoffs is to recapture the Southeast Division lead from the Winnipeg Jets, but that is not entirely true. Actually, the Hurricanes would take eighth and seventh spot in the Eastern Conference before reaching the level of the Jets. Carolina suffered when it lost goalie Cam Ward and the team is still scraping to find ways to win without him. Carolina is going to need to find new ways to get wins on the board without Cam Ward in net if it wants to make the playoffs.