BEST LINES: Pinnacle -1½ +347 Bet365 -1½ +335 SportsInteraction -1 +210  5DIMES -1½ +360

BEST LINES: Pinnacle +127 Bet365 +125 SportsInteraction +130 5DIMES +125

Posted at 12:00 PM EST 

Before we begin and until further notice, we’re going to be splitting up our NHL underdogs into two bets. We’re playing them straight up for 1 unit and we’ll be playing them on the reverse puck line (-1½) for 1 unit, thus making up our traditional 2 unit bet. The thinking is that if the dog loses, we lose our bet anyway. If the game goes into OT, which is a coin-toss anyway, we lose our -1½ bet but have a chance to profit a pork-chop if we happen to get lucky and win it in the extra time. If our team is winning by a goal, we know for sure we’ll get a crack at an empty netter and there is also a good chance that if our team is ahead, it might be by more than one goal anyway. Therefore, our bet for this game and every dog we play will be -1½ for 1 unit and straight up for one unit.

-------------------------------------------

10:05 PM EST. OT included. We insisted how bad the Capitals were earlier this year and owe our readers an apology because we were wrong. They’re worse than we thought. You see, the Caps PDO (a luck driven metric that combines Save % + Shooting %) is 1.017, which ranks #1 in the entre league. In other words, the Caps puck luck has been off the charts but they only have four wins in nine games. If their luck wasn’t so great, we’d be discussing a two-win team. Washington has one win over its past four games, a luck-driven 4-3 OT victory over Detroit. The Caps scored with a two-man advantage with less than a minute left in the third to tie it. Again, this is a top-heavy team. After its top six forwards, the rest of the players on the Caps, including the defense (John Carlson is the exception), couldn’t crack most NHL lineups. Stay out of the box against the Caps and their chances of losing are far greater than winning. The Caps are one of this year’s false favorites and must be faded as road chalk until the market catches up.

The Canucks return home from a very successful road trip that saw them win four of five on the East Coast. The Canucks are strong defensively, as they rank 6th in the NHL in scoring chances against per game. In the final three games of said trip, Vancouver allowed 21, 22 and 29 shots on net respectively against Buffalo, Detroit and Minnesota. There is an angle in hockey that bettors like to play, which is to bet against a team returning home from a four-game trip or longer. That angle has some merit for sure but it’s never been a good one against the Canucks. That’s not saying that it won’t work here but it’s not a reason to bet against the Canucks. What we do know is Vancouver is playing very decent hockey with the metrics and results to back it. Written off for dead before the season started, the Canucks are playing with a chip on their shoulder and are absolutely worth getting behind here. 

The bets are as follows:

Vancouver -1½ +347 for 1 unit

Vancouver +127 for 1 unit

Open an account today at Pinnacle Sports and take advantage of their -104 style pricing on sides and totals, which is 60% better than other sportsbooks.