Top NHL Betting Picks of the Week – November 12th Edition

The biggest regular-season NHL game each year is the outdoor Winter Classic, this year between the Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks at Notre Dame Stadium on New Year’s Eve. Both teams unveiled their vintage jerseys for the game last week … and they are freaking awesome! The jerseys are a throwback to what the team wore during the 1930s. I recommend you Google them. Here’s a look at two interesting NHL matchups this week. Check back for NHL odds.

Top NHL Betting Picks of the Week – November 12th Edition

“We have to look at what we did bad in that third period, fix those things. I think we have to help Vasy a little bit more. I think we gave them life and we can’t do that.”#OTTvsTBL | Mathieu Joseph: pic.twitter.com/mViDgUDkgt

— Tampa Bay Lightning (@TBLightning) 11 de noviembre de 2018

Tampa Bay Lightning at Buffalo Sabres

• When: Tuesday, 7:30 PM ET (NBC Sports Network)

Tampa Bay led the East in points last season and is atop the conference again with 25. It has yet to lose back-to-back games this season but does come off a puzzling loss Saturday, 6-4 at home to Ottawa. Rookie Brady Tkachuk and Ryan Dzingel scored during Ottawa’s four-goal third period. Ottawa had been 0-6-0 when trailing after two periods.

Mathieu Joseph had two goals and an assist for the Lightning, and Victor Hedman scored in his return from an injury. Braydon Coburn also scored and Andrei Vasilevskiy made 28 saves. Hedman, who missed seven games with a shoulder injury, tied it at 2 by splitting a pair of defenders skating in from the right wing boards and scoring a power-play goal from the slot just 39 seconds into the second.

Saturday’s last-period collapse was eerily reminiscent of an early season home loss to the Vancouver Canucks in the second game of the season. In both games, the Lightning held a lead going into the third period but was thoroughly outplayed over the final 20 minutes and suffered defeat.

The Lightning was dealt a blow to the lineup when defenseman Anton Stralman and forward Adam Erne were unable to go Saturday night because of upper-body injuries. Both Stralman and Erne are day-to-day.

Buffalo is much improved this year and on a two-game winning streak. It won 4-3 Saturday in a shootout vs. Vancouver. This year’s No. 1 overall NHL’s draft pick, blueliner Rasmus Dahlin, recorded the first multi-point performance of his professional career. Dahlin finished the contest with a plus-3 rating. He had the secondary helper on Sam Reinhart’s game-tying marker.

Star Jack Eichel missed nearly 20 minutes against Vancouver due to an undisclosed injury, but he did return to the match. Eichel didn’t record a point in Buffalo’s 4-3 shootout win, but he did record five shots and one hit over 15:47 of ice time. He also scored for the Sabres during the shootout.

Carter Hutton saved 36 of 39 shots in the win. Hutton allowed one goal in three shootout rounds, which was good enough to earn the extra point. He improved to 6-6-1 in 13 contests this season. 

St. Louis Blues at Chicago Blackhawks

• When: Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET (NBC Sports Network)

The Chicago Blackhawks are in a free-fall as they have dropped seven straight games entering the week – which already has cost Coach Joel Quenneville his job even though the hast he second-most wins of any coach in history and won three Cups for Chicago. Quenneville was the second coach to get the boot after the Kings dumped John Stevens.

Perhaps the Hawks should have fired GM Stan Bowman. He has 42 percent of the $79.5 million cap tied up in four players — forwards Jonathan Toews and Patrick Kane, and defensemen Brent Seabrook and Duncan Keith. Problem is, Kane is the only one really delivering on the dollar. None of those four can be traded without permission. Seabrook has another five seasons remaining at $6.875 million per, while the others all have another four to go — Kane and Toews each at $10.5 million per and Keith at $5.538 million. Kane (29) is the only one under age 30.

Chicago’s new coach is Jeremy Colliton, now the youngest coach in the NHL. He had been coaching at Rockford of the AHL. The Blackhawks are entering a new era where they’re relying more and more on their younger players to help carry the load with the core veterans reaching the back nine of their NHL careers.

Quenneville once coached the Blues and there’s talk they could hire him if they don’t start playing better. This is already the fourth meeting this season between these division rivals. Chicago won the first two in overtime but lost the most recent meeting, 7-3 in St. Louis. That was the first of this seven-game losing streak. Vladimir Tarasenko had two goals, and Ryan O’Reilly and Zach Sanford each had three points as the Blues rolled.

Jake Allen stopped 16 of 19 shots before exiting with 1:01 remaining in the second period after Sanford collided with him, shoving him into his own net. Chad Johnson entered in relief and stopped all five shots he faced. Corey Crawford allowed six goals on 36 shots in the loss. 

Expert NHL Betting Picks

Take Tampa on the road and Blues in Chicago.