NHL Betting – Winnipeg at Anaheim (Game 1)

Winnipeg Jets (+125) at Anaheim Ducks (-138, 5 o/u)

The Winnipeg Jets (43-26-13, 20-13-8 away), who are in the playoffs for the first time since the franchise moved from Atlanta, have the unenviable task of facing the top seed in the Western Conference, the Anaheim Ducks (51-24-7, 26-12-3 home), in the first round. Game 1 goes tonight at the Honda Center in Anaheim (10:30 PM Eastern).

The Jets ended the regular season on a high note with a 5-1 win over the short-handed Calgary Flames. The win capped a 6-3-1 run to end the regular season, and was the fourth in five games for the team, which allowed it to snag the last Wild Card spot in the Western Conference.

Despite the Jets’ strong play down the stretch, head coach Paul Maurice knows that his yeoman squad enters the playoffs as long-shots to beat the star-studded Ducks. But he’s not entirely displeased with that dynamic.

“We’re a huge, decided underdog in this series,” said Maurice. “They finished first, best team in the Western Conference. We didn’t. But we have some confidence in our game. Even if you finished first, you’d want to come in as the underdog, wouldn’t you?”

As Maurice said, the Ducks were the best team in the West during the regular season, and finished the year winning five of their last seven. Despite ending the year with 51 wins, though, Anaheim posted just a +10 goal differential and struggled to keep the puck out of its own net at times.

That said, they were excellent in close games and their 25-12-4 home record was second-best in the Conference, just behind St. Louis.

The Ducks tied the Blues in terms of points (109), but edged out St. Louis for the top seed thanks to posting one more regulation/OT win. Head coach Bruce Boudreau is trying to make sure the team-to-beat label doesn’t get his squad overconfident, though.

“I think [expectations] always get higher, but I don’t want to put the cart before the horse here,” said Boudreau. “Let’s win the first round and then we’ll talk about winning the second round. I don’t think there’s anyone in the room that doesn’t sit at home and dream about what they would do with the [Stanley] Cup, you know? I mean, that’s your boyhood dream.”

In the trends, Anaheim won all three games in the regular season against Winnipeg. The Jets were a nice story this year, but don’t quite have the man-power to hang with the likes of Ryan Getzlaf, Corey Perry, and Ryan Kesler in a seven-game series. Nor do I think they’re likely to do so tonight.

My pick: Ducks -138.

(Photo credit: Lisa Gansky from New York, NY, USA (IMG_6356) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Photo has been cropped.)