Dan and Sat are joined by former Canuck Jannik Hansen to talk about the ongoing playoff series, his playoff memories, and much more.
This podcast was produced by Josh Elliott-Wolfe.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.
Dan and Sat discuss what the Canucks should target with their first round pick and if it should be best player available. Also, hear from Harman Dayal of The Athletic on some of the prospects the Canucks could target and more.
This podcast was produced by Josh Elliott-Wolfe.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.
Ryan Reynolds won't be part of the new ownership group of the Ottawa Senators, as the actor's bid for the club isn't moving forward, reports ESPN's Emily Kaplan.
Reynolds' request for an exclusive window to finalize the deal was declined, adds Kaplan.
The "Deadpool" star was aligned with a bid from real estate mogul Christopher Bratty's Remington Group. The consortium was reportedly prepared to offer $1 billion for the team, which Forbes valued at $800 million in December.
Two more celebrities - Snoop Dogg and The Weeknd - recently joined the pursuit to purchase the Senators.
The deadline for interested parties to submit final offers is Monday.
Edmonton Oilers defenseman Darnell Nurse was automatically suspended one game for instigating a fight with Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Nicolas Hague in the final five minutes of regulation during Game 4, the league confirmed Thursday.
The NHL reviewed the penalty and had the option to overturn the suspension. Head coach Jay Woodcroft was also automatically fined $10,000 under the rule.
This series hasn't been overly exciting in terms of competitiveness. All four games to date were complete blowouts decided by four goals or more.
But it has been exciting in terms of offense. We've seen 32 goals through four games, good for an average of eight per game. The lowest output thus far was in Game 1, where the two sides combined for six goals.
The reason that's exciting is because of the total. Each game, the line was set at 5.5, and each game, we had more than that.
While Akira Schmid versus Frederik Andersen is probably the optimal goaltending matchup for preventing goals, I still expect to see plenty.
Schmid has come back down to earth following a lights-out performance against the Rangers. He's appeared three times in this series, allowing eight goals on just 48 shots. That's an .833 save percentage.
Clearly, he hasn't played impeccable hockey, and being yo-yoed in and out of the net probably won't help his confidence, either. I think Schmid is a better goaltender than he's shown in this series, but certainly not the guy we saw dominate the Rangers in the opening round.
On the flip side, Andersen is a gettable goaltender as well. He's statistically one of the worst goaltenders in the league in terms of coughing up rebounds. There should be second-chance opportunities for a Devils team that has plenty of supremely talented forwards.
Andersen has tightened up a little bit in the playoffs, but during the regular season, he legitimately was a negative in goals saved above expected. That means he allowed more goals than he should have, given the workload faced.
The Hurricanes have proven they can score without some of their big guns up front. If they're behind, they'll put a ton of pressure on Schmid.
We know the Devils have plenty of stars as well that can get to Andersen. Not to mention, they'll likely pull the goalie with plenty of time to spare if they're down one, two, or even three goals in the third period. That could lead to an extra tuck or two to get us over the number.
Bet: Over 5.5 (-125)
Brent Burns over 3.5 shots (+110)
It hasn't been a noisy series for Burns. While his Hurricanes hold a commanding 3-1 lead over the Devils, he hasn't been overly involved in the offense. He's found the scoresheet in only one of four games and failed to record four shots in any of them.
Despite that, I still favor Burns in this spot. He's been a monster at home in these playoffs, attempting 46 shots over five games and generating at least eight attempts in all but one. The exception was Game 1 against the Devils, where the Hurricanes led for 50 minutes and didn't need to attack.
One would think the Devils aren't going to get blown out again with their season on the line. If that proves true, Burns will spend upwards of 25 minutes on the ice looking for opportunities to get involved and help create offense.
Roope Hintz over 2.5 shots (-135)
Hintz has cracked the Kraken. He's piled up 15 shots through the first four games of the series, going over his total in all but Game 4. That was a blowout in which the Stars spent the final period and change dumping pucks in and not seeming the least bit interested in trying to generate any offense.
His two best shooting games of the series came at home, where Hintz attempted six and seven shots in Games 1 and 2, respectively. Hintz is a selective shooter who likes to get in tight before pulling the trigger, so if he's generating that kind of volume, it's going to lead to insane success.
That's no exaggeration, either. Over the 30 games Hintz attempted six shots or more, he recorded at least three shots in 26 of them. That translates to an 87% hit rate.
He's gone over the number in four of five home playoff games and all five home games played against the Kraken this season. Look for him to stay hot in Game 5.
Todd Cordell is a sports betting writer at theScore. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @ToddCordell.
The Edmonton Oilers blasted the Vegas Golden Knights 4-1 at home Wednesday to square their second-round playoff clash at two wins apiece. Edmonton needs to tick these four boxes to triumph in the series as it goes down to the wire.
Be cool under pressure
Andy Devlin / NHL / Getty Images
Vegas' tenacity and pace have troubled the Oilers on occasion. The Golden Knights forecheck aggressively, reducing a defenseman's time and space to move the puck, and race up ice to try to strike in transition when those opportunities arise.
Edmonton was prone to blunders in Games 1 and 3. Giveaways, blown tires, and lackadaisical checking produced Golden Knights goals. Vegas scored on numerous three-on-three rushes when the Oilers' defenders got disconcerted and left a man open.
Game 2 supplied the blueprint for Edmonton to stem the tide. Defensemen made short, simple passes that eluded the high forecheckers and sparked breakouts, which stopped Vegas from racking up quick-hit chances and offensive-zone time. Stuart Skinner stoned every rush shot he faced in a 5-1 win.
Edmonton flipped the script on Vegas in Game 4. Forechecking hard, Nick Bjugstad stripped Shea Theodore by the Golden Knights' net before depositing a wraparound. Ryan Nugent-Hopkins' snappy release beat Adin Hill at the end of a lengthy cycle shift. The Oilers' puck poise and crisp passing in the D-zone helped them dominate on the shot clock and scoreboard in the first two periods.
Crucially, Skinner cleaned up a defensive lapse. When Mattias Ekholm and Kailer Yamamoto both converged on the puck-handler on one Vegas foray, letting Mark Stone slip to the net behind them, Skinner denied Stone's deke with his pad. Leon Draisaitl teed up Ekholm's blast from the left faceoff dot 20 seconds later.
Some nights, the Oilers author their own demise. When the puck's in their zone, they need to be in sync in man coverage, box out the screener on point shots to deter tips, and avoid handing Vegas possession on a platter. They can't afford to repeat the careless plays that led to backbreaking goals earlier in the series. Game 4 was a positive step, though Game 5 will be tougher if Darnell Nurse is suspended for instigating a late fight.
Swamp Vegas on power play
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
Edmonton's incandescent power play has started to cool. The Oilers are 1-for-8 since Hill entered Game 3 as Laurent Brossoit's injury replacement. That said, they potted the one goal efficiently. Evan Bouchard accepted Connor McDavid's pass and tickled twine Wednesday nine seconds after Shea Theodore went off for a retaliatory slash.
Edmonton's top unit marries three dynamic talents - Draisaitl, McDavid, and Bouchard - with a complementary 100-point playmaker in Nugent-Hopkins and a skilled worker bee in Zach Hyman.
This quintet scores off Draisaitl's one-timers, McDavid's snipes, Bouchard's bombs from the blue line, and the rebounds and scrambles those clappers create. Six of Draisaitl's playoff-high 13 goals have come on the man advantage. Edmonton's success rates in the series (35.3%) and postseason (45.5%) remain extraordinary.
The NHL's least penalized team, the Golden Knights were shorthanded 2.38 times per game in the regular season and 2.40 times per game in Round 1. That rate has rocketed to 4.25 times per game against the Oilers. The minors they took in Game 4 included a blatant too-many-men offense and an elbowing infraction in the Edmonton zone. Alex Pietrangelo's late, reckless slash to the hands of Draisaitl could trigger a suspension.
Five NHL power plays have scored at a 35% clip over a full postseason (minimum 10 games played) since 1978, when data for this became available. The top team's success rate - the 2021 Colorado Avalanche - hit 41.4%. The Oilers' power play could set a new record in defeat or propel them to the conference finals.
Match Golden Knights' scoring balance
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
When they click into top gear, any of Vegas' top three lines can dictate tempo and turn defense into offense. They force turnovers, string together nice passing sequences, cycle the puck back and forth, and create openings to pepper it on net. NHL ironman Phil Kessel has been scratched since Round 1 because Vegas boasts so many capable scorers and potent forward combinations.
Six Golden Knights - linemates Ivan Barbashev, Jack Eichel, and Jonathan Marchessault, plus Chandler Stephenson, Michael Amadio, and Zach Whitecloud - tallied goals at even strength in Games 1 through 3. Besides Draisaitl, Warren Foegele was the lone Oiler to score in that phase until Wednesday. It's significant that Bjugstad, Ekholm, and Nugent-Hopkins all lit the lamp at five-on-five.
The Oilers excel if their stars uplift the supporting cast and vice versa, like when Yamamoto shrugged off Stone's huge hit in Game 2 to collect his own rebound and feed Draisaitl to score. McDavid's two assists in Game 4 upped his playoff total to 12, the league high.
At worst, no one produces when the big guns rest. That wasn't a problem in Round 1: Yamamoto, Hyman, Bjugstad, Evander Kane, and Klim Kostin all bagged important goals. Although Hyman and Kane are scoreless in the last five contests, Nugent-Hopkins just snapped his 11-game skid.
Subdue Eichel
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
Vegas' first-line center was productive in Game 1 (assist, empty-net goal); out of sorts in Game 2 (two defensive-zone penalties); and forceful in Game 3 (two helpers, snipe that chased Skinner from the net). In Game 4, Eichel fired five shots on target and whipped a dangerous no-look pass to Barbashev to no avail.
Forever linked to McDavid as the second guy drafted in 2015, Eichel never lifted the Buffalo Sabres to the playoffs, idling as the Oilers experienced the highs and lows of the Stanley Cup chase. In his first postseason, Eichel has done damage as a shooter and facilitator on the Vegas power play's left flank. The Golden Knights' expected goals share is 62.6% when he skates with Barbashev and Marchessault at five-on-five, per Natural Stat Trick.
Eichel is tied with Draisaitl for the series lead with four points at even strength. He and Marchessault are Vegas' top shot generators by a wide margin. They won't outscore Edmonton's superstars on most nights, but managing it once more would dent the Oilers' Cup hopes. More than anyone, Eichel is the player Edmonton has to quiet.
Even though, statistically, Game 3s have been studied to be more critical to a team's overall win probability of a series, it's hard not to believe that a Game 4 - where a team can either draw even, go down 3-1, or go home - isn't the most pivotal of the first four games in a best-of-seven.
With a big chunk of data built up through four games, let's take a look at each series to see if there's anything worth playing in the in-series betting markets.
Normally, I try to take the Hurricanes' constant domination in even-strength expected goals with a grain of salt, as their high-danger chance numbers don't always match what their puck pressure creates in the analytics. However, whether it's having watched the four games or acknowledging that 20 of the Devils' 45 high-danger chances in this series came as part of their one big effort in Game 3, predicting New Jersey to take three straight games would seem foolhardy.
There's a bigger issue afoot for the Devils, and that's between the pipes. Vitek Vanecek's goals saved above expected is the worst in these playoffs by a mile at -8.08, behind Andrei Vasilevskiy's surprisingly bad -3.69 in the first round. Akira Schmid has actually stopped around a half-goal above expected per goal, but Lindy Ruff made him the scapegoat for the first two games in Carolina and might now be out of confident options.
Our stance for this series has long been, "The Stars, but not at these prices," and only diverted from that twice: after they lost Game 1, and when the Stars were being priced at a discount prior to confirmation that Miro Heiskanen would be OK to play in Game 4.
The Stars are driving the even-strength play at about a 56% rate, and it could be argued that outside of two very unusual segments in this series - four Kraken goals in four minutes of Game 1 and four more goals in six minutes after Heiskanen was maimed in Game 3 - Dallas has been the vastly superior team. However, laying more than 2-to-1 odds for Dallas to finally vanquish the Kraken should be left for those who didn't make a bet after Game 1 and are without futures positions on the Stars and their best Conn Smythe candidates.
They needed the help of a referee shin pad, a post, and the back of Sergei Bobrovsky's head, but the Maple Leafs kept hope alive of pulling off a fifth 0-3 comeback in a Stanley Cup Playoffs series.
After Game 3, the Leafs were still in the neighborhood of just +700 to win what amounts to four straight coin flips - if you adhere to the largely even on-ice metrics. As you might assume, that was a less advantageous payout versus just rolling over Toronto moneylines, but either option seemed too short for something that has historically happened around 2% of the time. After Toronto found its first of four required wins Wednesday, +325 isn't enough to bet on three more.
We were getting to the point where the Oilers, their fans, and their backers probably had flashbacks to years past when goaltending - or a lack thereof - undermined whatever five-on-five advantage they had. Instead of leaving it up to Stuart Skinner, Edmonton strangled the Golden Knights defensively in Game 4 with just 0.86 expected goals against. The Oilers also generated six power plays - unlike in Game 3 where it took them 36 minutes to get one.
Edmonton is -130 on the moneyline to take Game 5 in Vegas, and the impending suspension of Alex Pietrangelo, who leads Vegas in ice time, changes the calculus for the series. A series price of -165 suggests Edmonton needs to win the series 62.3% of the time, and if you haven't been adding Oilers bets before the series, or when they've trailed, you can still back Connor McDavid and Co. at a decent price.
Matt Russell is the lead betting analyst for theScore. If there's a bad beat to be had, Matt will find it. Find him on Twitter @mrussauthentic.
Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo lost his cool and took a hefty chop at Leon Draisaitl in the waning minutes of his team's 4-1 loss in Game 4 against the Edmonton Oilers on Wednesday.
Draisaitl, who paces the postseason with 13 goals and 18 points, just missed scoring an empty-netter before getting whacked by Pietrangelo.
Alex Pietrangelo gives Leon Draisaitl a two-handed slash after an empty net opportunity. pic.twitter.com/wziPdleLDx
Oilers captain Connor McDavid said postgame that Pietrangelo should be suspended for the play.
"You'd like to see it reviewed for sure," McDavid told reporters. "I would like to see it suspended. It's as intent to injure as you can get. Time, score, clock all play a factor. He comes over his own head and places it just under Leon's chin. You'd like to see something like that suspended. That's not a hockey play."
Pietrangelo might've still been upset after getting cross-checked from behind into the boards a few minutes earlier by Evander Kane.
Nurse received an instigator penalty for his role in the scrap. Since the infraction occurred in the game's final five minutes, he's subject to a one-game suspension pending review.
Game 5 is set for Friday in Vegas with the series even at two games apiece.
