[The Wiz]

The beautiful thing about hockey totals: while you don’t have the ‘margin for error’ that you do in other sports, the flipside of that is that there’ s not a lot of room for the linesmaker to compensate for teams that play ‘over’ or ‘under’ the total with regularity.Additionally, the lower scoring makes the team’s game to game output much more predictable.You’ll lose a play here and there on a ’soft’ goal or other unusual occurrence, but successful NHL teams are built to play a certain way.Most successful teams are built to play good defense, limiting opponent’s scoring opportunities and having a good goaltender to stop the shots that do get through.Teams without playmakers on offense–like Phoenix–have no other option but to play this style of hockey if they want to win.The Coyotes are #29 of 30 NHL teams in scoring offense, but 4th in the NHL in scoring defense. As long as this disparity holds up, they’ll remain a solid ‘under’ play.
Toronto has been playing better of late, and they’re a team that can score goals. They’re ranked #7 in scoring offense, and 29th in scoring defense so clearly their ‘goal’ is the diametric opposite of the Coyotes and they want to outscore their opponents. In a matchup of contrasting styles it comes down to which team will better be able to ‘impose their will’ and control the tempo and style of the game. Not only in hockey, but in all sports, defense usually wins out.I'm not sold on the Maple Leafs despite their recent success, and i'll stick with the Coyotes–usually by playing the ‘under’–until circumstances dictate that we do otherwise.Tonight, the Maple Leafs’ offensive abilities gives us a bigger total to go under & I'll gladly do so.

under 6

[rain_e]

I'm on this as well. Glad to see your write up and hopefully confirm our pick!