The Columbus Blue Jackets will look to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins for the first time in seven games Saturday night when Game 2 of their first round playoff series will be contested. The Jackets played a good game Wednesday night outshooting the Pens 34-32 and outhitting them 47-28 while limiting Sidney Crosby to one secondary assist along the way. <\/p>\n
Columbus (43-33-5-2) at Pittsburgh (52-24-4-3)<\/strong>
\n When: 7:00 PM ET, Saturday, April 19, 2014<\/strong>
\n Where: Consol Energy Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania<\/strong>
\n Broadcast: NBCSN, CBC, RDS, ROOT, FS-O<\/strong>
\n Penguins Lead Series 1-0<\/strong>
\n Jackets vs. Pens Betting Lines<\/strong>
\n Columbus Blue Jackets +1\u00bd -175 +169 Ov 5\u00bd +113<\/strong>
\n Pittsburgh Penguins -1\u00bd +155 -186 Un 5\u00bd -124<\/strong>
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\nATS Matchup Insight<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0CappersPicks Insider Preview<\/a><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\nThat’s the good news. The bad news is the Penguins may have gotten their bad game of the series out of the way and still won despite not getting a goal from Sid, Evgeni Malkin, Chris Kunitz or James Neal. The Blue Jackets have lost all five postseason games in franchise history.<\/p>\n
The Columbus Blue Jackets will get a boost Saturday night in the form of some returning forwards to the lineup. RJ Umberger and Nick Foligno are slated to come back to the lineup Saturday after missing Game 1 with injury. The Jackets could use the re-enforcements after letting a two goal lead slip away in Game 1.<\/p>\n
\n*CLICK HERE* GRAB OUR BEST Expert NHL Hockey Picks for 2014 GAMBLING season!<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Brandon Dubinksy played about as well as anyone could have imagined in a shadow-roll of Sidney Crosby. I give Dubinsky Round 1 in the battle but also think it is a longshot that he repeats his stellar performance Saturday. Crosby is the best in the world for a reason – it is nearly impossible to pin him down.
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\nScoring three goals against Pittsburgh has to be seen as a positive but the play of reigning Vezina Trophy winning goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky left something to be desired. He allowed four goals on 32 shots and has ugly 4.04 goals-against average in his four postseason appearances.<\/p>\nBobrovsky is going to have to steal a game or two in the series for the Blue Jackets to have a chance – he has to be much better on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The Pittsburgh Penguins won the opener despite playing just an average game. Sidney Crosby had a rare poor night and Marc-Andre Fleury shook off some early jitters and was good in the last half of the game.<\/p>\n
Fleury was the single biggest question mark for Pittsburgh heading into Game 1 – he passed the first test – it will be interesting to see if he passes the second!<\/p>\n
Evgeni Malkin returned from injury and looked good offensively for the Penguins and had two assists. Crosby, Malkin, Neal and Kunitz will break out sooner than later – not a good omen for the Jackets.<\/p>\n
Dave’s FREE NHL Betting Prediction<\/h3>\n
A few trends to consider:<\/strong>
\n\u2022 Under is 8-1 in CLB last 9 road games.
\n\u2022 Under is 7-1 in CLB last 8 vs. Metropolitan.
\n\u2022 Under is 12-4 in CLB last 16 overall.
\n\u2022 PIT are 49-18 in their last 67 home games.
\n\u2022 PIT are 15-6 in their last 21 vs. Metropolitan.
\n\u2022 Under is 7-3 in PIT last 10 games following a win.
\n\u2022 Over is 13-5 in the last 18 meetings.
\n\u2022 Over is 7-3 in the last 10 meetings in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\nThe Pittsburgh Penguins are Columbus’s kryptonite – the Pens have won six straight in the series.<\/p>\n
While I think the Pens take Game 2, my play is the Over in this game \u2013 Over is 7-3 in the last 10 meetings in Pittsburgh. I still don’t fully trust Marc-Andre Fleury and Sergei Bobrovsky’s playoff numbers are sketchy to say the least.<\/p>\n
Pittsburgh will score Saturday and the return of RJ Umberger and Nick Foligno only strengthens the Columbus offense as well.<\/p>\n
Pick:<\/strong> The Over – 5 1\/2 goals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Blue Jackets vs Penguins Playoff Betting? The Columbus Blue Jackets will look to defeat the Pittsburgh Penguins for the first time in seven games Saturday night when Game 2 of their first round playoff series will be contested. The Jackets played a good game Wednesday night outshooting the Pens 34-32 and outhitting them 47-28 while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":75806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[60637,35012,60635,60638,2993,2886,10559,9253],"class_list":["post-75781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhl","tag-blue-jackets-vs-penguins","tag-columbus-blue-jackets","tag-columbus-blue-jackets-vs-pittsburgh-penguins","tag-columbus-vs-pittsburgh","tag-free-nhl-picks","tag-game-2","tag-nhl-gambling-tips","tag-pittsburgh-penguins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75781"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75811,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75781\/revisions\/75811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/75806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capperspicks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}