Premium NHL Picks: December 28th

Two premium picks today:

Boston Bruins @ Tampa Bay Lightning:

Bruins beat the Panthers last night in shoot outs as Tim Thomas got his 1st shoot out win of the season. Lightning beat the Thrashers on Sunday thanks to LeCavalier's overtime goal. That was their fourth win in last five games.

Bruins have a 2.1 goals against per game average which is the best in the league. They are one of the best road teams in the league with a 10-5-1 record.

Bruins demolished the Bolts early December in Boston. 8-1 was the final score. Lightning had won the first match of the season between the clubs in November in Florida.

Dan Ellis will make the start for the Lightning tonight and he has allowed only seven goals in last three starts. Tim Thomas is most probably going to be between the pipes once again for the Boston Bruins. He was very good against the Panthers last night.

Lightning are the third best powerplay team in the league but Boston Bruins are also a very good penalty killing team with a 87.0% pk rate. 

Except for the extraordinary game in Boston, we haven't seen many high scoring games from Boston. Considering the form of Thomas and Ellis, we should see a low scoring game tonight. I will go with UNDER.

PICK: UNDER 5.5 GOALS [LOSS]

2 units @ 1.75

Anaheim Ducks @ Phoenix Coyotes:

Coyotes beat the Dallas Stars 1-0 on Sunday and that was their second win in a five game road trip. They are now back home and they will take on Anaheim Ducks who will play their sixth consecutive road game tonight. The road trip was nasty for the visiting Ducks as they dropped four of their last five. The single victory came in Boston as the Ducks shut out the Bruins 3-0. They are a team you can expect interesting results. Hiller was amazing that night as he stopped 45 shots. 

Ducks have scored only 10 goals in last 5 games and they have allowed 16 in this span. When you look at the last five games of the Phoenix Coyotes, you see that they had their own scoring problems, scoring only 3 goals in last 3 games.

Coyotes will welcome back goaltender Bryzgalov tonight. Ducks will have Hiller in net. 

This will be the 4th match between the Ducks and Coyotes this season. Ducks won first two games but the Coyotes responded with a 3-0 win on December 5th. 

It was the highest scoring game at Jobing.com Arena when Ducks beat the Coyotes 6-4 last month. I am not expecting such a game tonight. More likely a very tight game and a good performance from both goaltenders.The total has gone UNDER in 9 of Anaheim's last 13 games on the road and the total has gone UNDER in 4 of Phoenix's last 5 games when playing Anaheim.

PICK: UNDER 5.5 GOALS [WIN]

2 units @ 1.76