The Minnesota Wild bent and then broke against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 4.
Colorado had the ice tilted for most of the night, but Minnesota was able to get to the second intermission with the score tied.
The Avs took over from there, however, and skated out of the Twin Cities with a 5-2 victory and a 3-1 series lead.
Colorado can punch its ticket to the Western Conference finals with a win on home ice Wednesday night.
The Avalanche are decided -210 favorites to do just that.
With seven wins in eight games this postseason, it’s hard to poke many holes in Colorado’s game.
The Avs have outscored their opponents, 33-20, and they have a plus-10 goal difference at 5-on-5.
Their metrics aren’t eye-popping, but they’re still solid. Plus, when you have as much playmaking talent as Colorado does, you don’t need to dominate on the shot clock to get results.
Minnesota’s fate isn’t sealed, but rhyming off three straight wins against the best team in hockey would be a stunner, especially with Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin out for Game 5.
That said, the Wild have given a decent account of themselves for most of this series, and they have arguably been the third-best team in the Stanley Cup playoffs behind Colorado and Carolina.
Getting this series back to Minnesota will require several things to go the Wild’s way, but the most important is for the goaltending to shore up.
Whether it’s Jesper Wallstedt or Filip Gustavsson, they need to improve on an abysmal .853 save percentage in this series.
To give their goalies a fighting chance, the Wild will likely need to commit to a more pragmatic approach. They can go up and down the ice with most teams in the NHL, but the Avs are not most teams.
Minnesota’s best chance forward in this game and series is to commit to bringing Colorado to the mat.
If Minnesota adopts this approach, we should see a pretty tight game, with fewer scoring chances at both ends of the ice. That puts value on the Under, but it also makes this a good contest to target to go beyond regulation.
The Plays: Under 6.5 (-114) | 60-minute draw (+370, FanDuel)
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
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