{"id":6765,"date":"2019-10-04T16:29:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T16:29:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=6765"},"modified":"2019-10-04T16:29:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-04T16:29:22","slug":"nhl-hockey-betting-toronto-maple-leafs-at-columbus-blue-jackets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nhl\/nhl-hockey-betting-toronto-maple-leafs-at-columbus-blue-jackets\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL Hockey Betting: Toronto Maple Leafs at Columbus Blue Jackets"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Toronto Maple Leafs looked as good as advertised in their opening game 5-3 win over the Ottawa Senators on Wednesday night. In fact, it was more of a celebration than a competitive hockey game. The Senators scored 25 seconds in and took a 1-0 lead into the dressing room at the end of the first period but from there on out it was all Toronto. John Tavares was named the team’s new captain prior to the game, Auston Matthews scored a pair of goals and Tyson Barrie added a pair of assists in his first regular season game in a Maple Leafs uniform. The battle for the Stanley Cup is wide open but Toronto’s status as the #3 choice in NHL futures odds <\/a>appears to be justified.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS AT COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS
NHL ODDS: LEAFS -145
NHL TOTAL: 6.5<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Not much is expected of the Columbus Blue Jackets this year after a mass exodus of free agents left the team in the offseason including goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky (now with Florida), Matt Duchene (now with Nashville) and Artemi Panarin (now with the NY Rangers). The team’s big free agent acquisition was former Detroit Red Wing Gustav Nyquist and defensemen Seth Jones and Zach Werenski are budding superstars. The team has over $11 million cap space, a lot of young talent and a great motivator in head coach John Tortorella. For now, former backup Joonas Korpisalo moves into the starting role–he’s from the same Finnish goaltending factory that created Nashville’s netminding duo of Pekka Rinne and Jusse Saros. His backup is Latvian prospect Elvis Merzlikins who unless I’m mistaken is the first guy named ‘Elvis’ to play in the NHL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Toronto, of course, is just loaded with talent. Their top six forwards including Auston Matthews, John Tavares and Mitch Marner are as good as any in the NHL. The 3rd and 4th line are a bit of a question as depth among their defensemen. Michael Hutchinson was once a competent NHL starter for Winnipeg but he’s started only 11 games since the 2016-2017 season. He’s an unknown quantity–he could be a steal as a backup or he could struggle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of this matchup, the biggest issue for Toronto might be focus. This is a tough scheduling spot for the Leafs–they come in off their season opening win and have a home game against arch rivals Montreal on Saturday night with a matchup against defending Stanley Cup Champions St. Louis on tap for Monday night. Classic ‘sandwich spot’ and it would be tough for the Leafs not to be looking ahead to the big home games on deck. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a mistake to write off a NHL team simply because they lost a few big name free agents. Last year, the New York Islanders were supposed to struggle after losing John Tavares but instead they went 48-27-7 for 103 points and finished 1 point behind Metropolitan Division winners Washington. Columbus has a decent amount of talent on the roster, a number of intriguing prospects and a first rate head coach. They could be one of the surprises of the season. At any rate, they’re the play here in their home opener facing a Toronto team in a tough schedule situation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BET COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS +131 OVER TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

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The Toronto Maple Leafs looked as good as advertised in their opening game 5-3 win over the Ottawa Senators on…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":6766,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhl"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6767,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6765\/revisions\/6767"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}