Playoff-hopeful Coyotes hope to halt Blues' win streak

Hockey Betting Lines

03/02/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The Phoenix Coyotes will continue the chase of their first playoff appearance in eight years tonight when they host the St. Louis Blues at Jobing.com Arena.

The Coyotes won eight of their final 11 games before the Olympic break and own a one-point lead over the Kings for the fourth spot in the Western Conference. Though Phoenix has already matched its point total from last year with 79, it trails first-place San Jose by 10 points in the Pacific Division.

"We've earned a lot of points in the standings, but I don't think we've played as well as we can yet," head coach Dave Tippett told the Coyotes' Web site. "We're going to strive to get better and better...We've still got a long ways to go to get ourselves to where we feel like we're going to be a strong playoff team.

"We played hard to get ourselves in a playoff position before the break, now this last push is very important for us. We have to continue to play well."

The Coyotes play their next three games at home and have won six of their last eight as the host. They did get shutout by the Stars at home in their final game before the break on February 13.

Petr Prucha left that game on a stretcher after getting hit hard into the boards by Dallas' James Neal, but he could return to action tonight. He has 11 goals and 20 points on the season.

The Blues, meanwhile, won their last three games before the break, including a pair a shootout victories, and will try tonight to match their season-best four-game winning streak accomplished from January 9-16. They are five points back of a playoff spot in the West.

St. Louis will be without both Keith Tkachuk and Cam Janssen for this contest. Tkachuk, who has 12 goals and 16 assists this year, had surgery on his left pinky finger on Friday and is expected to miss 10 days of action, while Janssen was given a five-game suspension over the break for delivering a late hit to the head of Washington forward Matt Bradley in a 4-3 shootout win on February 13.

"It's unfortunate," Blues president John Davidson told NHL.com of Janssen's suspension. "Cam has a feel for what happened and he did talk directly to the player that he hit. I don't think [Janssen] plays the game in a malicious way, but he plays it hard and the timing was late."

The Blues will have David Backes and Erik Johnson, who were both a member of the silver-winning Team USA squad that lost to Canada in overtime on Sunday.

Phoenix is 2-0-1 versus St. Louis this year after getting swept in the four- game series a season ago. The Coyotes have won seven of the last 11 played at home in the series.

Coyotes goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov has been in net for all three games this year, posting a 32-save shutout in St. Louis on October 29. He is 4-6-1 with a 2.61 goals-against average lifetime versus the Blues.

Chris Mason should counter in net for St. Louis and he is 1-0-1 in two meetings with Phoenix this year as well as 6-2-2 with a 2.47 GAA versus the club lifetime. Mason made 34 saves in a 3-2 overtime win at home on November 19, with Johnson scoring 17 seconds into OT for the Blues.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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