While the NBA has all but yielded the night to the BCS Championship game, the NHL isn’t so accommodating and offers a full slate of action tonight for your sports betting enjoyment.  Ironically, the NHL has much the same dynamic at play as the NBA this season in that the Western Conference is much superior to the Eastern Conference.  That should be evident tonight as the Chicago Blackhawks continue their quest for the President’s Trophy as they head to the TD BankNorth Garden to take on the Boston Bruins.  Chicago is tied with San Jose for both the Western Conference and overall NHL lead, while Boston is 5th in the East.

CHICAGO BLACKHAWKS VS. BOSTON BRUINS

We had a totals play on the Bruins in their last game that didn’t quite work out, losing by a half goal.  The premise is still valid, however, as the Blackhawks are starting to wake up on offense.  They’ve scored four or more goals in seven straight games now, and have gone ‘over’ in five of their last six.  They held up their end of the bargain for our totals play against Minnesota, but the Wild managed only a single goal.  The Blackhawks have shown no mercy against the East, winning 8 of 9 matchups this year.

The Bruins have shown a decided bias to the ‘under’ this year, but at home have a more reasonably balanced mark of 9 ‘overs’ and 11 ‘unders’.  Their goal scoring output of late has been very erratic, with the Bruins scoring 6,2,1,4, 2,2,4 in their last 7 games.  What is interesting is that despite their stingy play, the head to head series between these two teams has been an ‘over’ dominated affair.  As you’ve probably learned by now, we place a lot of significant on same season matchups which often give good indication of stylistic tendencies in head to head play.  These two teams met in mid December in Chicago with a total of 9 goals scored in a 5-4 Blackhawks win.  The last meeting at Boston saw 8 goals scored and 5 of the last 9 games on the Bruins home ice have gone ‘over’ the total.  With a low total of 5 on this game, we’ll look for that trend to continue.

PLAY BOSTON/CHICAGO OVER 5 -120