NHL Hockey Best Bets for April 8, 2016
Only one game on the Friday NHL card before the regular season concludes on Saturday with every team in action and 15 games on the board:
COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS AT BUFFALO SABRES:
Not exactly ‘game of the year’ material. The Sabres have been playing fairly well down the stretch and in comparison to the sad contingent they put on the ice last year everyone involved with the organization has to be happy where they’re at. The team got some good news today as Tyler Ennis practiced after missing three months due to a concussion. He’s not going to play this year but just having him on the ice was a boost. Although there has been some concern that the Sabres’ recent strong play will hurt their draft seeding the upside has significantly eclipsed the downside. The mood is changing in Buffalo. Last year as they were ‘taking a dive’ in hopes to get the first pick in the draft and Connor McDavid the mood was bad. When they failed to get the #1 pick it hit rock bottom. But everything is working out–the Sabres got Jack Eichel at #2 and he’s going to score a lot of goals in the NHL for a lot of years to come. He may never be the all around player/team leader/McJesus that Connor McDavid is but a player that is capable of scoring 30 or 40 per year is always going to be in demand.
On the flip side, however, we’ve got the Columbus Blue Jackets. The Jackets were supposed to ‘bounce back’ this year following an injury ravaged 2014-2015 season. Columbus played very well down the stretch last year and that was supposed to be a harbinger of things to come. It wasn’t–the Jackets opened the season 0-7-0 and that cost head coach Todd Richards his job. The team brought in John Tortorella and he was able to stop the bleeding though the team never did improve beyond mediocrity. Some of that was again due to injury–there was a point this season where both starting goalie Sergei Bobrovsky and backup goalie Curtis McIlhenney were both out of action. There was some good to come out of the goaltending mess–it gave 21 year old Joonas Korpisalo a chance to play at the NHL level. Korpisalo was well regarded but he impressed everyone with his ability to mentally ‘handle the load’ of being a starting goalie in the NHL and showed flashes of brilliance. But the Blue Jackets being the Blue Jackets every silver lining is surrounded with a ‘dark cloud’–the team now has to figure out what to do with Bobrovsky who is signed with the team through the 2018-2019 season at $8.5 million per.
The bigger issue in Columbus is everything else. A healthy Bobrovsky is one of the best goaltenders in the league and assuming that he can avoid injury the team has plenty of options in net. What they’d like to do is keep Bobrovsky and solid backup McIlhenney as the 1/2 while Korpisalo continues to develop in the AHL. That would also give the team some much needed stability in a year where everything else is in flux. No indication about Tortorella’s future as head coach. No real clue as to what the team is doing to build for the longterm. The Ryan Johansen to Nashville deal that brought Seth Jones to C-Bus might end up being a win/win for both teams. But depending on which version of events you believe it might not have had to come to that were it not for Tortorella’s notoriously prickly personality. The prevailing wisdom is that the Jackets should take a page out of the Toronto Maple Leafs’ playbook and rebuild through youth–players like talented forward Oliver Bjorkstrand. But that requires some strong leadership on the bench and in the front office–Toronto has it but it’s unclear if Columbus does.
The only solace for the Blue Jackets is that regardless what happens here they’re not going to finish in last place in the conference or in the league. Toronto has ‘clinched’ last place in the East though they’re still in a battle with Edmonton for the worst overall record in the NHL (wouldn’t it be something if the Oilers got the first pick in the draft again this year?). The team looks like they don’t care any more and that’s not the case with the Sabres. Buffalo finally has some excitement around the franchise and they should get the win here.
BET BUFFALO SABRES -115 OVER COLUMBUS BLUE JACKETS