The Carolina Hurricanes and New York Rangers meet Saturday in game 6 of the East Second Round NHL Playoffs at Madison Square Garden. The Carolina Hurricanes look to reach the conference finals for the second time in the last four years. The New York Rangers need a win to save their season and force a game 7 on Monday.
The Carolina Hurricanes are averaging 2.75 goals per game and are scoring on 12.8 percent of their power play opportunities. Sebastian Aho leads Carolina with 4 goals, Tony DeAngelo has 8 assists and Andrei Svechnikov has 34 shots on goal. Defensively, the Carolina Hurricanes are allowing 2.42 goals per game and are killing 78.6 percent of their opponent’s power plays. Antti Raanta has allowed 20 goal on 291 shots faced, and Pyotr Kochetkov has given up 6 goals on 60 shots.
The New York Rangers are averaging 3.08 goals per game and are scoring on 28.1 percent of their power play opportunities. Chris Kreider leads New York with 6 goals, Adam Fox has 10 assists, and Ryan Strome has 38 shots on goal. Defensively, the New York Rangers are allowing 3.17 goals per game and are killing 79.4 percent of their opponent’s power plays. Igor Shesterkin has allowed 33 goals on 433 shots faced, and Alexandar Georgiev has given up 2 goals on 31 shots.
The Hurricanes are 0-5 in their last 5 road games and 13-5 in their last 18 overall. The Rangers are 41-20 in their last 61 home games and 5-2 in their last 7 overall. The under is 6-0 in Hurricanes last 6 overall. The under is 5-0 in Rangers last 5 overall. The Hurricanes are 6-20 in the last 26 meetings in New York and 16-35 in the last 51 meetings.
As I’ve said before, defense becomes the top priority once you get into the business end of the series. Nobody wants to make that mistake trying to be super aggressive at the other end. In this series through five games, we’re seeing an average of 3.6 goals, so this was a low scoring series to begin with. The under has hit in 9 of the last 12 meetings between these teams overall. I’ll keep riding the under in this series.