Penguins

Wild Card Battle? Penguins Gm78: Lines, Notes & Odds vs. Bruins

Published

2 years ago

April 21, 2022

And down the stretch they come. The Pittsburgh Penguins (43-23-11) are in a dogfight for third place because they have just three wins in their last 10 games. One of the teams they could be battling for wild-card position is the Boston Bruins (47-24-5), who are two points ahead of the Penguins with one game in hand. The Penguins betting odds reflect the uphill battle, too.

Should the Bruins claim the first wild card, the Penguins will need to finish third, ahead of the Washington Capitals (tied with the Penguins at 97 points), or face the Eastern Conference top seed Florida Panthers.

Thursday is the fourth and final game of Evgeni Malkin’s suspension for cross-checking Nashville defenseman Mark Borowiecki. Malkin has been skating in the Penguins lines during this slow week. The Penguins haven’t played since last Saturday when they lost to the Boston Bruins, 2-1 at TD Garden.

Boston scored two goals in the first 2:01, and the Penguins could never overcome the deficit.

Casey DeSmith gave up a couple of soft goals but rebounded to stop 27 of 29 shots. Danton Heinen scored the Penguins’ lone goal. However, the team managed just 24 shots.

Head coach Mike Sullivan is looking for consistency among his defensive pairings. Beginning Thursday, it appears he will go back to his original configurations.

Expected Pittsburgh Penguins Lines

LW	C	RW
Jake Guentzel	Sidney Crosby	Bryan Rust
Jason Zucker	Evgeni Malkin	Rickard Rakell
Danton Heinen	Ryan Poehling	Kasperi Kapanen
Brock McGinn	Sam Poulin	Drew O'Connor

LD	RD
Brian Dumoulin	Kris Letang
Marcus Pettersson	Jeff Petry
P.O Joseph	Jan Rutta

Goalie
Tristan Jarry
Casey DeSmith

Boston Bruins Lines, per Boston Hockey Now:

Brad Marchand – Patrice Bergeron– Jake DeBrusk

Taylor Hall – Erik Haula – Curtis Lazar

Trent Frederic – Charlie Coyle – Craig Smith

Nick Foligno – Tomas Nosek – Marc McLaughlin

Defense:

Mike Reilly – Charlie McAvoy

Matt Grzelcyk – Brandon Carlo

Derek Forbort – Connor Clifton

Goalie:

Jeremy Swayman

Pittsburgh Penguins Game Notes:

*The Penguins are 8-2-0 in their last 10 matchups against the Bruins at home and have scored four or more goals in seven of the 10 games.

*Pittsburgh and Boston have traded wins against each other over each of the last nine head-to-head matchups (4-5-0).

*The Penguins have allowed two or fewer goals in six of its last eight games against Boston.

*Mike Matheson (11G-18A) is one point shy of becoming just the fourth Penguins defenseman in the last 10 years (since 2012-13 season) to record 30 or more points with the team, along with Kris Letang (9x), Matt Niskanen (1x) and Justin Schultz (1x).

*Sidney Crosby has netted the game-winning goal in each of the last two wins and is up to a career-high-tying nine game-winners this season.

Pittsburgh Penguins Betting

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The Penguins are a whopping +200 cover the puck line (1.5). That is tempting, and you know I like big odds. Even bigger are the odds for overtime (+310). But, we’re going to throw caution to the wind. The Penguins haveing not played in four days is a big factor.

The “Bet Against Dan and Make Money” bet of the day is take the Bruins and 5.5 Over. The combo bet on DraftKings pays +280.