Blues hope to keep flying high in trip to Colorado

Hockey Betting Lines

03/06/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The St. Louis Blues are in position to record their longest winning streak in over six years, but to reach that mark they'll have to find a way to halt their struggles versus the Colorado Avalanche this season.

St. Louis goes for a sixth straight victory when it visits Colorado and the Pepsi Center this evening.

The Blues open their post-Olympic schedule with six straight games on the road, a season high, and they have won the first two contests of that trek to run their overall win streak to five games. After a victory at Phoenix on Tuesday, St. Louis claimed a 6-1 triumph in Dallas on Thursday behind a pair of goals from Paul Kariya that give him 398 in his NHL career.

Kariya also had an assist and Alexander Steen, Patrik Berglund, Brad Boyes and T.J. Oshie all added goals for the Blues, who haven't won six straight since December 6-18, 2003. St. Louis has 23 goals over its current win streak.

"Going into the [Olympic] break there, I thought we were playing our best hockey of the year," said goaltender Chris Mason after making 29 saves. "Fortunately enough, we seem to be carrying it over after the break. We're playing hard, getting the pucks at the net and making it difficult for the goalie."

Andy McDonald added an assist for St. Louis to give him three goals and two assists over a five-game point streak.

St. Louis, now 18-9-4 as the visitor this year, are within three points of a playoff spot in the Western Conference.

The Blues hope their current momentum can help them capture their first win over the Avalanche this season. St. Louis has been outscored 9-2 in losing both of its previous meetings this year with Colorado, including a 5-2 road setback on February 8 that dropped the club to 3-6-0 in its last nine trips to Denver.

Mason was pulled in the second period of that loss after allowing five goals on 15 shots faced. Ty Conklin halted all 18 shots he faced in relief.

Chris Stewart has three goals and three assists for Colorado in the two meetings this year, and the forward has four goals in his last seven games. He did not score in the Avalanche's last contest, a 3-1 setback to Phoenix on Thursday.

Craig Anderson made 27 saves but allowed the game-winning goal to former teammate Wojtek Wolski with 23.7 seconds left in regulation. Wolski was dealt to Phoenix on Wednesday for Peter Mueller and Kevin Porter.

Mueller scored in his Phoenix debut on Wednesday night and assisted on John- Michael Liles' tally Thursday, but Colorado still lost for the third time in four games and is two points behind Vancouver for first place in the Northwest Division.

"We've come back from tough losses where we maybe should have got a point, but we respond the right way," said Anderson.

Colorado kicks off a three-game homestand tonight and is 20-9-2 as the host thanks to wins in five of six and nine of its last 12 at the Pepsi Center.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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