NHL Tuesday night (8/4) Single Pick

Carolina Hurricanes – New York Rangers:

8.00 PM ET, Tuesday, August 4

New York Rangers are in deep trouble after losing the first two games of this best-of-five series. They are now facing each other for the third time in four days and the Rangers are forced to win to stay alive in this Stanley Cup qualification round.

The New York team ended on an eleventh spot, two points behind Carolina Hurricanes in the Eastern Conference. In that sense two equally strong teams – but the Rangers actually managed to win all four games between these sides during the regular season. 

Carolina Hurricanes were defeated four times by the Rangers this season but now – when it really matters – they seem to be the better team. Andrei Svechnikov was on fire as he scored a hattrick in the 4-1 win at Scotiabank Arena on Monday, which led to the current 2-0 lead in this series.

The Hurricanes have been a very disciplined and defensively well-organized team during the entire season and now they have a golden opportunity to become the first team from the qualification round to secure their place in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

Conclusions and betting play: It has been very difficult for New York Rangers to create chances against a defensively strong Carolina Hurricanes. This could be their last game of this very special NHL season and they need to go out with a somewhat desperate attitude to be able to win this game.

The Rangers are forced to take the initiative in this game, which could also make them vulnerable as the Hurricanes are efficient when counter-attacking. Although, New York Rangers did score as many as 234 goals this season (which can be compared to Carolinas’ 180 goals) so they surely possess the attacking skills.

Five goals have been scored in total in both of the two first games and the likelihood that we will get to see at least five goals also in this should be seen as quite strong.

New York Rangers will most likely concede a couple of goals also in this game as they are defensively quite weak, and at the same time they really have to push forward. They have only scored three goals in total in the two first games but they have the ability and the offensive skills to score more goals, which also, probably, will be totally necessary to stay in this series.