Tip: Tight affair to wait in Nevada?

Winnipeg Jets visit T-Mobile Arena and Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday night at 10:00 PM ET.

Vegas Golden Knights-Winnipeg Jets

Two strong defenses that face each other

There are two strong defenses that are battling in this series, as they were among the teams that conceded the least amount of goals during the regular season. The Golden Knights has players in their back pairings such as Shea Theodore and Alex Pietrangelo, and before game one against the Jets – the Golden Knights got their defensively strong defenseman Zach Whitecloud back. Jets, for its part, is also the stronger in the defense if you are asking me. The team from Manitoba was even better than the Golden Knights during the the regular season when it came to avoid a big number of shots on goals and a big number of goals conceded. In the Jets’ back pairings, we find players that have their main strengths in the defensive part of the game – and I am here talking about players such as Brenden Dillon, Nate Schmidt, Dylan DeMelo and Dylan Samberg.

Even if we can find some good forwards in both teams, my opinion is that the two teams defenses are stronger than the offenses, and if we look to the point producers in the both teams – we do not find anyone before place thirty among the point scorers in the league. Like my colleague Andreas Nord brought up before the first game between these two teams, the Jets depth on the forward side is a concern, and with both Nikolaj Ehlers and Cole Perfetti unavailable due to injuries, the Jets does not has a lot of offensive weapons to lean back on.

First game: few goals and few goal scoring chances

The first game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Winnipeg Jets ended 5-1 in Jets favor. It was a tight game with few goals (apart from the two in empty net from Jets) and few goal scoring chances as the Jets shot thirty-one shots on goal and the Golden Knights seventeen. If we are looking at the expected goals, the Jets won that stat with 3,7 expected goals against Golden Knights 2.02. If we remove the two empty netters that the Jets scored with 1.21 and 0.19 remaining of the third period, the Jets expected goals was written to 2,0.

Conclusion and prediction

The first game between the Golden Knights and the Winnipeg Jets ended up with six goals after three straight goals from Winnipeg in the third period, of which two was scored in the empty net. I think that this game, like the first game, is going to be a tight one. Both of these teams are, in my opinion and according to statistics, better defensively than offensively. This was showed in the first game, as there was a low amount of goal scoring chances that was created and few expected goals for both teams.

My betting tip for this game is therefore:

Under 6.0 goals (regular time) @ -152 at Unibet