Intelligent Hockey: Best Bets For Saturday’s NHL Action

We have officially hit the weird part of the NHL season.

Check the scores any day of the week and at least one of the results will surprise you.

The postseason is more or less set in stone with the exception of a handful of teams in the West vying for a couple of spots, but the teams that ostensibly are eliminated have moments of friskiness.

No one is safe.

With seven games on the schedule, it’s a light Saturday.

But even with fewer games, there is still opportunity to be found.

Here are my best bets for Saturday’s games.

Colorado Avalanche at Buffalo Sabres

Saturday, February 19 – 1:00PM ET

This is the biggest mismatch of the weekend on paper. The tagline could be reduced to “the best playing one of the worst.”

The Buffalo Sabres have a convincing argument for being the least talented roster in the league, and they compensate by trying to avoid leaving themselves exposed.

Most NHL teams exhort their back end to be aggressive, but Buffalo’s defencemen stay rooted at their points and aren’t a threat to score in transition.

The Sabres’ lack of dynamism requires they overload on the puck in the defensive zone and then make short to intermediate passes up the ice.

Unsurprisingly, scoring is a struggle.

At 5-on-5, Buffalo is tied for the worst expected goals created and third worst in high-danger changes produced.

For the Sabres, nothing comes easy, so their attitude is playing with strength in numbers in all three zones.

Their opponent couldn’t be more different. The Colorado Avalanche are replete with skill at forward and defence, which gives them the latitude to get creative. They use a lot of misdirection to get opponents moving the wrong way. Colorado looks to employ flip passes to spring players for transition