NHL Hockey: Detroit Red Wings at Calgary Flames

By BetOnline October 16, 2019

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There was considerable excitement in Motown and a bit of surprise elsewhere when the Detroit Red Wings opened the season with 3 wins in their first 4 games including victories at Montreal and Nashville and a home win over Dallas. That enthusiasm has been tempered somewhat after a 5-2 home loss to Toronto and a 5-1 road loss to a rapidly improving Vancouver Canucks team. They’ll continue with their four Canadian cities in five games stretch on Thursday as they take on the Calgary Flames at the Scotiabank Saddledome. They’ll play at Edmonton tomorrow night before returning home for a rematch with Vancouver on Tuesday followed by a game at Ottawa on Wednesday.

The Calgary Flames have to be the most dysfunctional franchise in hockey. They had a great regular season last year only to find themselves eliminated in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. That loss to Colorado is looking less and less ugly as the Avalanche extend their red hot start to the season but Flames fans expected more after a 107 points season than an opening round ouster. This year they’ve not found any kind of momentum with a 3-3-1 record after 7 games. They’re not ‘out of it’ by any stretch but it’s tough to tell where this team is at or which way they’re headed. They’re just 3 points off the Pacific Division lead but they’re also just 3 points ahead of the two teams tied for last place.

Calgary’s biggest issue this year has been a lack of offensive productivity. After finishing the 2018-2019 regular season with the #2 goals per game in hockey (3.52) they’re currently #22 netting 2.43 per game. Adding insult to injury is the highly dubious trade they made with Edmonton sending James Neal to the Oilers in exchange for Milan Lucic. At the time, it looked to be a simple swap of bad contracts. That was before James Neal became the hottest power play sniper in hockey. Neal has 6 power play goals out of 8 goals total in 8 games. That’s not only more goals than he scored all last year in Calgary but he’s got twice as many power play goals this year than the entire Flames team.

When you’re not scoring you can’t get away with a mediocre defense and that’s what the Flames have at this juncture. They’re tied for #13 giving up 3 goals per game. To be fair, the Wings have a very similar statistical profile but there’s one big difference–we don’t have to lay a huge price to back Detroit in this game. And that’s the handicap for this game. This is a much more even matchup than the price suggests and there’s no other way to play it. We’ll also play ‘Over’ the total as 4 straight head to head have gone ‘Over’.