Arizona Coyotes at Colorado Avalanche - 8/12/20 NHL Picks and Prediction
Photo by Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Arizona Coyotes (36-30-8) at Colorado Avalanche (44-20-9)
NHL Hockey: Wednesday, August 12, 2020 at 5:30 pm (Rogers Place)
The Line: Colorado Avalanche -175 / Arizona Coyotes +155 --- Over/Under: 5.5 Click Here for the Latest Odds
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The Arizona Coyotes and the Colorado Avalanche meet in game one of their Western Conference quarter-final matchup from Rogers Place on Wednesday afternoon.
The Arizona Coyotes booked their spot in the quarter-finals after taking down the Nashville Predators in the qualifying round in four games following a 4-3 overtime win in the series-clinching game. Clayton Keller has a team-high 4 points in the playoffs with 2 goals and 2 assists while Phil Kessel, Taylor Hall and Oliver Ekman-Larsson each have a goal and 3 assists with Kessel and Hall logging 10 shots apiece for the Coyotes after the opening round. Christian Dvorak and Derek Stepan each have 3 points with Dvorak posting a pair of goals while Stepan has 3 assists. Darcy Kuemper started all four games for the ‘Yotes in the qualifiers, posting a 3-1 record with a .933 save percentage and a 2.77 GAA in goal.
The Colorado Avalanche booked their spot as the #2 seed in the West after posting a 2-1 record in the round-robin portion of the opening round with a 4-3 overtime loss to Vegas following their last-second win over Colorado and a commanding shutout win over Dallas. Nazem Kadri and Mikko Rantanen each have a team-high 4 points with Kadri scoring the last-second winner with 3 assists while Rantanen has a team-high 4 assists up to this point. Joonas Donskoi has 2 goals and an assist for his 3 points while Nathan MacKinnon and Andre Burakovsky each have a goal and 2 assists for their 3 points in the round-robin. Pavel Francouz and Philipp Grubauer each had a share of the goaltending duties for the Avs, with Francouz winning his lone start with a shutout while Grubauer went 1-1 with a .914 save percentage and a 2.45 GAA in goal for Colorado.
Arizona is 5-2 in their last 7 games against a team with a winning record and 3-8 in their last 11 games following a win while the over is 4-1 in their last 5 games as an underdog. Colorado is 8-1 in their last 9 Wednesday games and 9-3 in their last 12 games against a team with a losing record while the under is 17-5 in their last 22 games overall. The favorite is 5-1 in the last 6 meetings between these two teams.
The plus money with Arizona is tempting as the Coyotes played the more meaningful and competitive games in the bubble, but the problem is that the Avalanche are a lot better defensively than what Nashville brought to the table for most of that series. On the other hand, the Coyotes stepped up their defensive efforts too and at times, looked like the team that was leading the Pacific division early on in the season with stellar defense and not allowing more than two goals in a game. I’m going to side with the under here as I think we’re in for a low-scoring and hard-hitting series, but it has to start with game one so give me the under in this spot.
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Chris’s Pick Under 5.5
AUTHOR: Chris Ruffolo
Mitch's Take...
