posted April 3, 2008 at 15:29 in NHL Articles

Ottawa Senators (42-30-8) vs. Toronto Maple Leafs (36-33-11)

Thursday, April 3rd --- Air Canada Centre, Toronto --- 7:30pm EST

NHL Betting Line: Ottawa -175

The Senators have hit a landslide at the wrong time. The once vaunted Sens have gone 1-5 SU in their past 6 games and their defense and goal tending has collapsed to the point where they have pushed the OVER in 4-of-6 games. On top of that, they’ve proven that the road is no place for them going 4-11 SU in their past 15 roadies. While you’d think that Ottawa would enjoy a bevy of success against the hapless Leafs, Ottawa is way worse off than you think. Let’s take a deeper look.

Ottawa ranks second overall with 3.2 goals per game, and has the third best road scoring team with 3.1 goals per game. However, much of that had to do with how unstoppable the top-line was at the onset of the season. Daniel Alfredsson, Dany Heatley and Jason Spezza formed perhaps the deadliest trio in all of hockey. That is, however, until Heatley went down with an injury.

Suddenly, the Senators couldn’t score as often as they’d liked, and while they were still winning games, opponents realized something. They discovered that Ray Emery is a garbage goal tender. Sure, he’s a viable starter in a league that has far too many teams, but that doesn’t say much about a team that is a high favorite in our NHL futures to become the Stanley Cup Champions. Emery, for all his distractions and flair, has still allowed 3.13 goals against on the season. And the problem is that Martin Gerber is a career back up and not that much better.

On top of that, Emery is one of the worst starters in the league at coughing up rebound pucks. Teams that vehemently crash the net, like Minnesota, would crush Emery in the playoffs because all they’d have to do is pepper him between the pipes and wait for him to screw up. And that is not good news tonight as they meet Toronto, a team that is dangerous at unloading buckets of pucks on net. Toronto averages 31.09 shots per game, which spells disaster for the Senators net minders.

The problem was that even after Heatley came back, teams realized that they only had to do one thing to beat the Senators – stop their top-line. Ottawa went from being a feared contender to a one-trick pony virtually overnight. Teams started launching their best two-way players at the Spezza line, and effectively shut them down. Then the apparent faults in net, and defensively, came to light as the Senators dropped out of the President’s Cup race and now sit in the middle of a cluttered Eastern Conference bracket.

So big deal, right? One line can’t make a team, right? Wrong.

The drop off in production from the big three to the next three is absurd. Heatley and company all have 80+ points. After that, the net is Antoine Vermette (who?) with 48 points and the disappointing Mike Fisher, who has 47 points. The second and third line players simply aren’t getting the job done. Fisher especially needs to take some of the blame. This guy is the heir-apparent in Ottawa, and he notched five measly points in March. Five! Marion Gaborik did that in one game!

The question needs to be asked – why hasn’t the coaching staff broken up the top-line yet? They aren’t getting it done. Ottawa has averaged 2.8 goals per game over the past five, but only one of those games has equated in a victory. They’re throwing the same game plan every night and it’s beginning to kill them. Let Heatley and Spezza stay on the top-line with a guy like Vermette and drop Alfredsson down to improve the play of Fisher. It only makes sense if not for the sole reason that throwing that “fearsome” (read: sarcasm) top-line out there night in and night out has not led to the optimal result.

With a three-game losing streak in hand, and home-ice advantage steadily slipping from their grasps, Ottawa is in a mountain of trouble. And they have nobody but themselves to blame. They’ve been shut-out twice in back-to-back games against Montreal and Boston. You can’t win games without defense.

Toronto will be without Mats Sundin, but I’ll be damned if I lead you to believe that your betting dollars are safe with Ottawa tonight, or on any other given night. They are perhaps the most overrated team in hockey right now (the other would be Vancouver), and I’ll take a fiery batch of upstarts at home with Vesa Toskala in net over whatever Ottawa trudges out on to the ice tonight. Bet on Toronto to extend their 4-1 SU record over Ottawa.

NHL Furious Free Picks: Toronto +155 (UNDER)

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