NHL Best Bet: Wednesday, April 20th

The Dallas Stars are wrapping up their final road trip of the regular season as they play the second of a 3-game road trip to Canada. A 6 – 2 loss to Vancouver now brings them to Edmonton as playoff positioning in the Western Conference takes shape. Our NHL expert Ej Garr has a play on the total for this Wednesday night affair at Rogers Place.

NHL Best Bet: Wednesday, April 20th

• Edmonton vs Dallas: Over 6 Goals

Odds as of 9 am April 20th, 2022. Odds may now differ.

Edmonton vs Dallas Best Bet

Thursday, 01:30 (UK time)

The Dallas Stars are playing their final road games of the regular season and their final road trip has already gotten off to a rocky start. After surrendering 6 goals to Vancouver last time out, the Stars will get Edmonton and Calgary over the next two nights before returning home for their last 4 games.

Entering tonight’s contest, the Oilers have secured 94 points which have them in 5th place in the Western Conference standings. Edmonton netminder Mike Smith is coming off back-to-back 4 – 0 shutout wins against Vegas and Nashville as the Oilers have won their last 3 games by a 4-goal margin. 

The 4 – 0 win against Vegas last time out was impressive because it was a team effort and not just the top-line doing all of the damage. The 3rd and 4th lines were responsible for 3 of the 4 goals scored as the top line was held in check. The usual suspects of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl were unable to crack the score sheet but we all know that will only motivate them to come up big tonight to make up for it. The pair of stars are the only players on the Oilers roster that have acquired over 100 points as they have combined to score 96 goals with 119 assists 

The Stars just earned a 5 – 3 win against Edmonton less than a month ago in their only other meeting in the regular season. Dallas is currently in the 7th position and tied with Nashville on 91 points in the Western Conference standings. The Kings, Golden Knights, and Canucks are within a handful of points behind them, however, so the Stars will need every point they can get from here on out.

Out of all 10 teams that are chasing the top-8 playoff positions in the Western Conference, the Dallas Stars have scored the fewest goals and the 28.32 average age of this team could start to play a role in the finish to the regular season. Joe Pavelski leads this team in scoring and he is 37 years old and nearing the end of his career. Pavelski has only scored 3 goals in 10 April games and this is not the time to have your leading points-getter disappear.

Jason Robertson pulled off back-to-back hat-tricks on March 6 and 8 and ever since then he has fallen off the map. Robertson has only scored 7 times over the last 21 games as defences are keying on him and not giving him the space to create opportunities. With 36 goals leading the Stars, Robertson scored 11 of those goals when Dallas has been playing up a man on the PK.

After seeing Dallas look so bad the other night against Vancouver, there is no way I can expect the Stars to pick up the pieces and play well tonight  Granted, the Nucks are playing their best hockey right now, but Dallas might get lip up pretty good tonight and again tomorrow against Calgary. This 3-game road trip to Canada might see the Stars go 0 – 3 and their playoff position might be in jeopardy as a result.

I see this as another high-scoring affair and we don’t even have to sweat the half goal with a 6 on the board with reasonable 1.85 odds.

• Selection: Over 6 Goals
• Best odds: 1.85 (Unibet)
• Stakes 4/10

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