Kings aim for rebound in visit to St. Louis

Hockey Betting Lines

03/25/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - While the Los Angeles Kings continue to move closer to ending their eight-year playoff drought, the St. Louis Blues are falling further back in the postseason race.

Los Angeles will try to bounce back from a shootout loss while St. Louis aims to end a two-game skid this evening at Scottrade Center.

The Kings are 4-2-2 over their last eight games and earned three of a possible four points in a home-and-home set with Colorado. After a 4-3 overtime win at home on Monday, Los Angeles rallied late from two goals down to force extra time before dropping a 4-3 shootout decision at the Avalanche.

The point gained allowed the Kings to remain one up on the Avalanche for the fifth spot in the Western Conference with 10 contests to play and a game in hand over Colorado.

Drew Doughty and Alexander Frolov scored power-play goals for Los Angeles in the third period, with Frolov's coming with only 1:21 left in regulation. Jack Johnson scored a shootout tally, but goaltender Erik Ersberg was beaten twice in the frame after coming on in relief in the opening period.

Ersberg made 14 saves in his first appearance since Feb. 11 after Jonathan Quick yielded three goals on 16 shots in 18-plus minutes of work. Quick, who is among the league leaders with 39 wins, is expected to start tonight and is 1-2-1 with a 2.87 goals-against average lifetime versus the Blues.

"It took us a little longer than we anticipated, but we came back and that was a huge point for us," said Kings forward Anze Kopitar, who scored his career- high 33rd goal of the season in the first period.

While the Kings are closing in on their first playoff berth since 2002, the Blues have dropped two straight and four of their last six to fall 10 points behind the eighth-place Detroit Red Wings in the West with nine games to play.

St. Louis missed a big opportunity to make up ground last night, falling 4-2 at Detroit. Paul Kariya and Jay McClement scored the Blues' goals and former Red Wings goaltender Ty Conklin made 20 saves.

"I thought we were the better team tonight, but [the Red Wings] play hard and do the little things that takes to win," said St. Louis forward David Backes.

The Blues begin a three-game homestand tonight hoping to avoid dropping three straight for the first time since Feb. 4-8. They have lost six of their last nine at home, where they are just 12-18-5 this season.

Chris Mason should return to the starting lineup for St. Louis tonight, and the netminder is 7-3-0 with a tie, four shutouts and a 2.04 GAA versus the Kings.

Tonight marks the final meeting between these two clubs this season. The Blues have won two straight over the Kings -- picking up both victories in Los Angeles -- after a 2-1 home loss back on Oct. 10, but have still won five of the last seven played in St. Louis in the series.

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What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.