This amazing NHL season is at the business end now as the Colorado Avalanche prepare to take on the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, for a place in the Stanley Cup final 2022 later this month.
The two teams have been flying against their competition this season and one of the most anticipated games of the season is set to get underway on May 31st live from the Ball Arena in Denver.
We’ll take a look ahead to the game and give you our best free betting picks for the night to see if we can earn you some extra cash to take into the rest of the week.
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Colorado Avalanche came into the playoff tournament as the favorites to go all the way and lift the Stanley Cup, and they’ve shown exactly why with their performances so far in the post-season.
They started off their playoff campaign by sweeping the Nashville Predators with a 4-0 series whitewash, claiming an aggregate score of 21-9 to really hammer home their dominance.
They scored five or more goals in three of those games, with Game 2 going to overtime in the closest clash of the lot.
That led them on to face St Louis Blues, who they handily dispatched 4-2 over the series for a dominant showing also. The aggregate score this time was a little better, 22-18 in their favour of the six games, with both teams earning a win in overtime during the series.
Ultimately it was the eight goals of Center Nathan MacKinnon over the series that got them over the line, with his high of 13 points enough to ensure they made it to this stage.
Edmonton have had a slightly tougher run to this stage, but ultimately their success is all down to hard work and team ethic in those tough moments.
They started off with a 4-3 series win over the LA Kings in round one, where they battled back from 3-2 down to win the final two games of the series and turn it on it’s head with excellent defensive displays as they restricted them to just two goals in those final two.
There they faced off against the Calgary Flames where they were able to overcome a tough start with a 9-6 loss in Game 1 to pick up four wins on the bounce and really show their quality.
An aggregate score of 25-20 seems closer on paper than the games actually were with Evander Kane hitting a massive 12 goals over the playoffs so far, while Connor McDavid showed his creativity with 19 assists to ensure their progression.
They’re the favorites to win the entire thing for a reason, and the stats prove it.
So far this season the Avalanche have been victorious in 63 of their 87 games where they entered as moneyline favorites with the bookies, and in games where they have been priced at -178 or shorter they have gone 44-15.
They are the fourth best offensive team in the entire NHL, scoring 308 goals in total for an average of 3.8 per game, while allowing only 232 goals in total, for an average of 2.8 per game this season. That ranks them as the ninth-best defensive team in the league.
With the over set to 6.5 goals for this game, Colorado have managed to hit that figure in games on 49 occasions.
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The Oilers are coming into this one as significant underdogs and the stats show you why that is the case for this particular match up.
They tend to perform well though when the pressure is on their opposition, securing victory in 12 of the 30 games they’ve entered this season as underdogs with the bookies. But with odds of +150 or longer, they have gone just 1-6 this season which suggests the bookies often get it right.
So far this season they have managed to put together the seventh-best ranked offensive unit in the NHL, scoring 285 goals with an average of 3.5 per game.
Defensively though they’re quite open, allowing 251 goals total for an average of 3.1 per game, ranking them as the 18th best defence in the NHL.
With the overs set to 6.5 goals, there have been 52 Edmonton games this season to surpass that mark and combined, both teams tend to score on average 0.7 more goals per game, making the overs a great bet.
This game is going to be wildly entertaining and a lot of fun for any neutrals, with both teams more than capable of scoring goals against the other.
But the defensive abilities of the Avalanche tell me that they’re far more likely to keep Edmonton out, with the Oilers likely to try and draw them out into an end-to-end game of ‘who can score more?’.
This suits the Avalanche and with home advantage for Game 1 too, expect them to come out with the win and the overs to land too.
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About the Author
Daniel is a football writer who has a great thirst for the Premier League and other major European leagues. A lover of the beautiful game and a firm believer that the eye test is better than statistics. Also an avid MMA fan.
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