Flyers End March Gauntlet a +150 Underdog Against Rangers
The Philadelphia Flyers have 10 games left to secure a playoff berth.
They enter Tuesday’s division clash with the New York Rangers third place in the Metro, but they’ve lost four of their last six and are only two points in front of the Washington Capitals.
The odds at PA sportsbooks and NJ sportsbooks suggest the Flyers’ slide will continue at Madison Square Garden.
John Tortorella’s squad is a +150 underdog against a Rangers team that won four of its last five and is fighting for the top overall seed in the Eastern Conference.
If there’s any good news for the Flyers, it’s that they held New York to five total goals over two regular-season meetings.
But the Flyers only scored once in each of those contests.
At least the under should be in play given the dynamics of both previous meetings. The total sits at 6 on DraftKings and 5.5 on FanDuel.
The Rangers have not allowed an opponent to score more than four goals over the last five games, and they just held the Boston Bruins and Florida Panthers, the top two teams in the Atlantic Division, to five combined goals in their last two games.
The Flyers played in three straight low-scoring contests against East playoff teams – the Carolina Hurricanes, Florida and Boston. Each of those games featured five goals.
All three of the Flyers’ games against Carolina and both matchups with Florida had five goals or less, so the trend is there for a lower-scoring contest with a top-tier East squad.
You would think the unders on player props could be in play as well. The Flyers allow just 27.5 shots on goal per game and the Rangers sit at 29.4.
Flyers goalies faced fewer than 25 shots in both matchups with the Rangers this season, but that trend did not apply to the Philadelphia attackers.
The Flyers put 40 and 37 shots on net in the two showdowns with New York.
Owen Tippett was responsible for 13 of those 37 shot attempts, and as we know with him, a high volume of shots is likely in any contest. Sean Couturier and Cam Atkinson were the only other Flyers to have more than three shots on goal in both meetings with the Rangers.
Alexis Lafreniere, Chris Kreider, and Mika Zibanejad all had four shots on occurrence in the two matchups, but there are no clear shooting trends on the Rangers roster based on the two previous meetings.
If you think the Flyers will lose, it may not be a bad idea to sprinkle some money on Detroit to beat Washington in order to keep the Caps at bay for at least another day.
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