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Posted on May 12 Before Game 1. 

Series wager. How many of you are in hockey pools? We’ll guess about 90% of the folks that watch this game regularly are in a playoff hockey pool of some sort. Of all those pools, how many of them had the participants taking Predators players before Ducks’ players? How about zero. While the same can be said about Chicago and Nashville, that’s not the point because Chicago was a big favorite to beat Nashville. The point here is that if this was a first round series, Anaheim would’ve been at least a -160 favorite to beat Nashville and probably more. Two rounds later and the Preds are favored over the Ducks because why? 

Nashville is favored here because there is a big overreaction to its two series wins over Chicago and St. Louis but we’re not as impressed as the rest of the market. We pointed out before the playoffs that Chicago was flawed and they were. St. Louis got hot for 20 games during the regular season otherwise they were very ordinary all year. The Preds shut down Vladamir Tarasenko and that basically shut down St. Louis’ offense. Nashville’s path to the West Finals looks great on paper (Chicago and St. Louis and winning eight of 10 games) but it wasn’t that rough and they did not have an easy time with the Blues, especially in St. Louis. While we take nothing away from Nashville, as they have a legit shot here to be sure, they’re wrongly being billed as the chalk in this series. Pekka Rinne has been the hottest goaltender in the playoffs so far, which also helps to inflate the price on the Preds. Do we trust his hot hand to continue? It could but we wouldn’t bet on it. No goaltender in the NHL has allowed more soft goals over the past two years than Rinne and we’re not convinced he’s regained his old form.

After being eliminated from the playoffs for four consecutive years by a Game 7 loss at home, the Anaheim Ducks broke the spell of bad luck by defeating the Edmonton Oilers 2-1 in a home Game 7 to advance to the Western Conference final. Although the Ducks had the same number of regulation wins (46) this season that they had last season, they are an improved team. Rickard Rakell, Jakob Silfverberg and Shea Theodore are all playing at a higher level, and the addition of Patrick Eaves (questionable for Game 1) has given them another veteran offensive contributor. While it’s more challenging to score in the postseason, the Ducks are scoring more now (3.18 goals per game compared to 2.68) than they were in the regular season.

Ryan Getzlaf is having the most productive playoffs of his career. He has a personal playoff best eight goals in 11 games. He only netted seven goals in 21 games when the Ducks won the Stanley Cup in 2007. Nobody in this league can play the shutdown center position better than Ryan Kesler. He’s a physical force, plus, he can play the game at a high level. He can skate, shoot and score. Kesler is a unique weapon that the Preds cannot match. After shadowing Connor McDavid for seven games and doing a masterful job, Kesler takes a step down in class against Ryan Johansen.

Let’s not forget that the Ducks took out the Flames in four games and then had to deal with the explosive Oilers offense in the next round. Furthermore, Anaheim has home ice advantage and Nashville has been rather weak on the road this entire season. Yeah, they won Game 1 in St. Louis but then lost the next two games there and they lost 6-1 and 4-3 in their two visits to Anaheim during the regular season. Let’s also not ignore that the Ducks defeated Edmonton with John Gibson posting a .903 save percentage. That’s actually a remarkable stat that proves how resilient, talented and dangerous the Ducks can be. Gibson figures to be better in this series. At the end of the day, it once again comes down to value. Nashville is the inferior team here that does not have home ice advantage and that is spotting a price. That’s precisely where we step in and play the value. 

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