NHL betting takes us down south to the Philips Arena in Atlanta as a couple of teams trying to get in the backdoor of the Eastern Conference playoffs tangle.  The Atlanta Thrashers are currently tied with Tampa Bay for 10th place with 66 points and tonight they’ll host the 9th place New York Rangers who have 65 points.  Neither team have looked too anxious to make a run–both have gone 4-4-2 in their last 10 games.  In any case, the game does present a good value opportunity on the total.  Since the Rangers don’t have ice girls these lovely girls from the Islanders’ ice girls graciously volunteered to fill in.

ATLANTA THRASHERS VS. NEW YORK RANGERS:

The Atlanta Thrashers all of a sudden have something in common with a newly returned Mormon missionary–they’ve forgotten how to score.  After maintaining a torrid scoring pace following the Ilya Kovalchuk trade the Thrashers must have all of a sudden realized that he’s no longer in the lineup.  Atlanta has scored a total of 4 goals in their last 4 games–all losses.  They’ve faced some decent defenses in that stretch as well as the red hot Carolina Hurricanes, but for a team that spent most of the season near the top of the NHL scoring offense standings with a 3+ goal per game average there’s clearly a problem.  Atlanta has now gone Under the total in three straight following a run in which they went Over in 16 of 22 games.  Talented rookie center Evander Kane is out three weeks with a broken foot, but that alone can’t explain the Trashers sudden scoring drought.

Unfortunately, the New York Rangers aren’t going to be an easy team to get out of a scoring slump against.  The Broadway Blueshirts aren’t much offensively, ranking 25th in scoring offense but they are competent on the defensive end, currently ranked #12 in scoring defense.  In 32 road games this season, the Rangers have gone Over in only 8 of them (21 UN, 3 push).  The two teams have met 3 times this season–the first game of the year went Over, with the subsequent 2 going Under.  We look for the Thrashers’ scoring woes to continue here and for this game to go Under the total.

PLAY ATLANTA/NEW YORK RANGERS UNDER 5′ +105