NHL Betting: Minnesota Wild at New York Rangers

A short betting card on Monday night with a pair of NHL games on the schedule. In the early game West will meet East as the Minnesota Wild travel to Madison Square Garden to take on the New York Rangers. The Wild are 4-2-0 on the season and are coming off a 7-2 thrashing of Tampa Bay. The Rangers are 4-4 on the season and lost 3-1 to the Montreal Canadiens last time out.

A common mistake of neophyte bettors is to place too much of a value on the ‘brand name’ in a betting proposition. This means that they don’t evaluate the matchup at hand but give too much credence to a team’s historical success (or lack thereof). That’s the only reason the New York Rangers are favored here–they’ve got the bigger ‘brand name’. A careless bettor will look at the board and bet the Rangers due to their longer and more successful history. In this matchup, that’s a big mistake. The Minnesota Wild are legit. They lead the NHL in scoring defense allowing 1 goal per game. They are 1-2 on the road but the losses came against a couple of pretty fair teams called the Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks by identical 2-1 scores. They’ve already got three shutouts this year. Their offensive numbers might be a little skewed due to their 7 goal outburst against Tampa but when a team plays such good defense that gives them a lot of margin for error on offense. Overall, they’ve got a +13 goal differential which is #2 in the NHL behind the Ducks’ +14.

The Rangers have a reputation of playing good defense but this season so far it’s been more myth than reality. New York is ranked #22 in scoring defense allowing 3.25 goals per game. Weird scheduling setup for the Rangers in the past week or so. They had four days off between a win over New Jersey and Saturday’s loss to Montreal. They’ll play Minnesota on Monday night and then won’t play again until Saturday night. At this stage of the season such a long layoff between games isn’t a good thing. We’ll gladly take the better team at plus money.

BET MINNESOTA WILD +120 OVER NEW YORK RANGERS

NHL Betting: Minnesota Wild at New York Rangers