Sportsinteraction

Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

St. Louis +107 over Utah

9:00 PM EST. The schedule is doing the heavy lifting here, and it is not close. Utah played at Vegas on Wednesday night, lost, and comes home on the second night of a back-to-back with a three game losing streak and a battered roster, while St. Louis has been sitting around since Tuesday with its legs under it. The Mammoth are already missing Dylan Guenther, one of their best scorers, with Logan Cooley day-to-day on an upper body injury and defencemen Nate Schmidt and John Marino both out, and the goaltending is a mess: Karel Vejmelka is 6-6-0 with an .872 save percentage, Sebastian Cossa is at .865, and Utah is giving up 3.8 goals a game over its last ten. St. Louis is not lighting the world on fire, but the Blues have given up just 2.5 goals a game over their last ten, they are 5-4-1 in that stretch, and Robert Thomas is quietly running the show with three goals and 11 assists while Jimmy Snuggerud has six goals in his last ten games. A rested, structured team against a tired, injured one with shaky goaltending is a plus money spot worth taking every time.

St. Louis is 3-6-1 on the road and only averages 2.9 goals a game, so this is not a team that wins track meets, and Utah is better at home than on the road. The other landmine is the Mammoth power play, which converts at 37 percent, so if the Blues spend the night in the box, this gets ugly fast. But a power play cannot save you when you are on tired legs with your second line centre in the trainer's room and a goalie who has not stopped anything lately, and the first meeting between these two this season sets up exactly like a spot where the rested dog steals one.

Sportsinteraction