NHL: Hurricanes vs Islanders Odds Preview
Canes Trail the Rangers as the Islanders Eye a Wild Card Spot
This time of year has enormous NHL playoff schedule implications with tonight’s match-up being one. The Carolina Hurricanes (42-20-6. 90 points) finish off their three-game road trip with a stop at the UBS Arena to take on the New York Islanders (29-23-15, 73 points).
Oddsmakers have the Hurricanes as -150 road favorites with a total of six (-115 to go over). We start our Hurricanes vs Islanders odds preview with a deeper dive from a betting perspective.Â
Hurricanes vs Islanders 
Location: UBS Arena
Day/Time: Streaming: ESPN+
Hurricanes Moving Up Power Rankings
We still haven’t moved the Hurricanes to the top spot of our NHL power rankings. But they are close. The Florida Panthers are currently at the top. But with the moves Carolina made at the deadline, it’s going to contend for the rest of the season. It’s so close that when it comes to the Hurricanes vs Islanders odds, it’s really about which team would have a home-ice advantage in a match-up.
The ‘Canes have won eight of their last 10 games. And with games against the Blue Jackets, Canadiens, and Blackhawks on deck, Rod Brind’Amour’s team has one of the easier paths to the postseason. Carolina may have another step to take forward with Brind’Amour still learning how to use his new weapons in Jake Guentzel and Evgeny Kuznetsov.
This season, Carolina is 41-26 but has lost bettors 0.78 units overall. That has changed over the last 30 days with a 10-4 mark, good for 1.52 units of profit (all as favorites). The Hurricanes have a recent road record of 5-1 (+1.87), adding to a season-long mark of 19-13 (+0.88 units).Â
New York Doesn’t Have Enough
The New York Islanders are just one point behind the Detroit Red Wings for the last wild card spot and three points behind the Philadelphia Flyers for the third spot in the division.
After the Islanders dropped a 5-2 decision to the New York Rangers on Monday, we moved the Isles down to the bottom third of our rankings. They’ve lost four straight. Two of these games, Ottawa (lost 4-3 OT) and Buffalo (lost 4-0), New York was a favorite. You must beat teams who are not in contention at this time.
One of their problems has been a combination of poor defense and goaltending. Ilya Sorokin made a case for why you should never hand out eight-year deals. He is just 22-16-11 this season with a 3.03 goals-against average along with a .908 save percentage. That’s a far cry from his all-start season of a year ago that saw the Russian goaltender finish second in the Vezina Trophy voting.
To be fair, the 28-year-old goaltender leads the league in shots faced (1604) and saves (1457). Unlike the Hurricanes, the Islanders’ recent form shows that Patrick Roy’s team is just 7-7 over the last month (-1.10 units), 4-4 as an underdog (+0.60 units), and 1-1 (+0.18) as a home dog.
Mediocrity isn’t going to be enough to place the Islanders on the right side of most NHL scores and certainly not in the postseason.Â
The Number Tells The Story
You would think that with the number of opportunities, the Islanders give up, the Canes may go over the total by themselves. That thinking makes sense considering the Hurricanes are third in the NHL in shots per game (33), but we think this total of six smells like a trap, especially with just slight juice to the over.
That makes our NHL prediction today under six. We think we’ll catch Carolina looking ahead to getting home to face the Philadelphia Flyers. Expect Carolina to take an early lead and then suffocate a team that is 20th in both shots per game and scoring (3.00 GA).
That does it for our Hurricanes vs Islanders odds preview, all the best with your NHL picks and parlays.
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