NHL Bet of the Week: Minnesota Wild vs. Dallas Stars Playoff Edition

The best playoffs in all of sports are finally here, and this article will explain why the under 5.5 goals in the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars game number two is the lock of the week.

Minnesota Wild’s Style of Play

The Minnesota Wild have been a defensive minded team all season. They have relied on one player to drive their offense, which is something that is only possible when you keep the other team off the score sheet.

When you consider the majority of their forwards are good defensive players, and their blue line group is one of the most fundamentally sound in the league it would make sense why they have relied on defense for the whole season.

Lastly, they also have great goaltending this season led by Filip Gustavsson and Marc Andre-Fleury. The combination of fundamental defense and good goaltending is a great sign for under bettors.

Stars Goaltending

If you look at last year’s playoffs the Dallas Stars almost pulled off the upset against the Calgary Flames due to the play of Jake Ottinger. Ottinger established himself as one of the best young goaltenders in the league.

Ottinger won 37 games this year and had a .919 save percentage with a 2.37 goals against average. When you have Ottinger in one net and Gustavsson in the other net you have a great chance at any under like what happened in game one.

Both goalies totalled over 40 saves and Ottinger only let up the game winner due to an unlucky bounce that left Ryan Hartman wide open in front of the net. Overall, Ottinger can win this series by himself if the Minnesota Wild don’t get secondary scoring.

Previous Matchup

Including game one of this series four of the five matchups between these teams have had a total of five goals, with two of those games having multiple empty nets. Obviously that is something to worry about as teams in the playoffs might pull goalies earlier.

However, even if this is done, the score will most likely be 2-1 or 3-1 so the empty netter won’t hurt under bettors. Game one also saw the hit by Matt Dumba that knocked out Joe Pavelski so the series will start to get physical which is also good for the under.

Overall, these two teams play physcial and rely on their defense and goaltending to win games, which is exactly the style of play that under bettors love, so do yourself a favor and bet the under in this game to win some money.

Read more about the NHL playoffs.