Tip: Tarasenko's return to Enterprise Center

New York Rangers are visiting Enterprise Center and St Louis Blues on Thursday at 08:00 PM ET.

St Louis Blues-New York Rangers

St Louis Blues

The champions from the 2019 Stanley Cup are not in the hunt for the championship title this year, after their chances to reach the playoffs was vanished a couple of days ago. It is the first time since 2018 the team from Missouri misses the postseason contention, but is has been a weak season for the Blues, and they have traded multiple star players like Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko and Ivan Barbashev during the season. In addition to the losses of the star players, the Blues are currently forced to deal with injuries on key players such as Pavel Buchnevich and Robert Thomas, and on defensemen such as Robert Bortuzzo and Marco Scandella. St Louis defense has been the teams weakest part of the team this year, as they are among the teams in the league that has conceded the biggest amount of goals during the fall and winter, with an average of 3,65 goals conceded per game, and it is only eight teams that has conceded a bigger amount of goal scoring chances. Besides that, the Blues has one of the weakest penalty kills, as they just kill about 73 percent of the penalties, and there are only four teams that are worse when it comes to kill penalties.

New York Rangers

The team from “The Big Apple” are currently positioned as third on the Metropolitan Division are in the hunt for even more advanced positons in the Metropolitan Division and are especially in the hunt for the second place in the division – a spot currently held by the New Jersey Devils by three points margin to Rangers. The Rangers are back-to-back, and comes closest from a win against last year’s Stanley Cup-finalists, Tampa Bay Lightning, whom they defeated at home, in Madison Square Garden, with 6-3. Before the transfer window shut, the Rangers made some big acquisitions when they recruited above-mentioned Vladimir Tarasenko from St Louis Blues and the American star forward Patrick Kane from Chicago Blackhawks. The 34-year-old Kane was out against the Lightning due to a lower-body injury, and is “day-to-day” which means that his participation in tonight's game is doubtful. Even if Kane plays or not, Gerard Gallant possesses over a great set of forwards as the Rangers has players such as Artemi Panarin, Mika Zibanejad, Vincent Trochek and Chris Kreider in the roster. Besides that, the Rangers also have the 2020-2021-year Norris Trophy Winner, which is awarded the best defenseman in the NHL, Adam Fox in their set of defensemen and the 25-year-old American is having a good season as ha has been noted for seventy points. With the above-mentioned players, there is no doubt that the offense is New York Rangers strongest part of the team, and they are among the teams in the league that has scored the most goals, with an average of 3,37 goals per game, and are top ten in the league when it comes to powerplay as they have an 23,2 percent efficiency.

A real highlight from the game against the Lightning was when the Swedish forward Mika Zibanejad scored the 5-3-goal in this way:

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Conclusion and prediction

St Louis Blues are out of chances to reach the playoffs and has traded several key players, such as the defensive center Ryan O’Reilly and the Russian forward Vladimir Tarasenko. In addition to that, the Blues are currently forced to deal with injuries on key players such as Pavel Buchnevich and Robert Thomas, and on defensemen such as Robert Bortuzzo and Marco Scandella. Against a strong offense team, like New York Rangers, I think that the Blues and their weak defense is going to have a difficult night. The Rangers pattern a strong offense with players such as Adam Fox, Artemi Panarin, Vladimir Tarasenko, Mika Zibanejad, Vincent Trochek and Chris Kreider.

I think that Vladmir Tarasenko has good opportunities to be a winner in his return to Enterprise Center, that was his home for over ten years before he was traded this winter. Based on the home team’s weak defense, and the away team’s strong offense and strong powerplay, I think it is likely that the away team, despite being back-to-back, scores at least three times during regular game time.

My betting tip for this game is therefore:

New York Rangers Over 3.0 Goals (Regular time) @ -167 at Unibet

The stake refunded if New York Rangers scores exactly three goals during regular game time