Can Wings Close Out Blackhawks?
The Detroit Red Wings hold a rather surprising 3-1 lead on the Chicago Blackhawks in their best of seven series. The Blackhawks, who lost only seven games in the 66 game regualr season in regulation and only five more in overtime, have lost three in a row to the Red Wings and find themselves needing to go on a three game win streak to survive and advance to the Western Conference Finals. The good news for Chicago is two of those three games would be at home starting with tonight’s Game Five.
The odds are clearly not on the Blackhawks side. Of the 258 NHL teams to find themselves down 3-1, only 24 have come back to win the series. But it did happen three times between 2009 and 2011. The last team to pull it off was the Tampa Bay Lightning over the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2011. Usually when a team comes back from down 3-1 it is the higher seed that does it. This is probably because they have two of the three at home. Such is the case in this one.
The Wings beat the Blackhawks in Chicago in Game Two 4-1. They then went home and beat them 3-1 and 2-0. So there has been nothing flukey about this. 75% of the fans on Yahoo are picking Detroit to win Game Five and close it out.
Bovada has the Red Wings +1.5 -165 and the Blackhawks -1.5 +145 ATS. Moneyline has Detroit +180 and Chicago -220. Over/Under is 5 with over +120 and under -140. We are going to go with Detroit +1.5 and the under.
The winner of this series will face the winner of the Los Angeles Kings and San Jose Sharks series. The Kings lead that one 3-2 as each team keeps winning at home. Game Six will be in San Jose on Sunday. The Kings goalie Jonathan Quick recorded his 7th career playoff shutout with 24 saves in Game Five as the Kings won 3-0 to snap a two game losing streak. The Kings finally broke through with a goal with under two minutes left in the second period when Arize Kopitar scored. Less than a minute into the third, Los Angeles scored again to go up 2-0 on a goal from Slava Voynov. Jeff Carter added an empty net goal just before time ran out for the 3-0 final.
