Sharks visit Ducks aiming for season series sweep

Hockey Betting Lines

03/14/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - After three straight come-from-behind victories, the Sharks finally ran out of magic on Saturday. Good thing they haven't need much when facing the Ducks this year.

San Jose kicks off a six-game road trip this evening versus Anaheim at the Honda Center aiming to sweep the season series for the first time in 11 seasons.

The Sharks are leading the Western Conference with 96 points, three more than the second-place Blackhawks and are also three points back of Washington for the most in the NHL.

The club took a three-game winning streak into Saturday's meeting with Florida, a run in which San Jose had to rally in each game after being down heading into the third period. The Sharks then jumped out to a 2-0 lead in the first period yesterday, but failed to score again and ended up losing a 3-2 overtime decision to the Panthers.

Patrick Marleau and Ryane Clowe scored for the Sharks, who went 3-1-1 on a five-game homestand. Making his first start since Feb. 10, Thomas Greiss had 25 saves but allowed the winner at the 2:46 mark of overtime to Bryan Allen.

"We've got to put it behind us," said Sharks head coach Todd McLellan. "We accomplished a couple things tonight. We came out and we had a little fire in our belly and we played extremely hard in the first period but we let it get away from us though and that's the inconsistency in our game right now."

San Jose now hits the road for six straight and has won 10 of its last 12 as the guest. It opens the swing in Anaheim and will look to sweep the season series with the Ducks for the first time since it took all six meetings in 1997-98.

Anaheim eliminated top-seeded San Jose in last year's opening round of the playoffs as the eighth seed, but has been outscored 19-7 in losing all five regular season meetings this year. The Sharks have won six straight and eight of the last nine regular-season meetings overall, including four straight in Anaheim.

The Ducks have not been able to slow down the Sharks' top line of Joe Thornton, Dany Heatley and Marleau. Thornton has nine assists and 13 points versus the Ducks this year, while Marleau has five goals and 10 points. Heatley has chipped in with two goals and five assists as well.

Meanwhile, San Jose netminder Evgeni Nabokov, who should get the start tonight, has a 1.40 goals-against average while winning all five meetings.

Anaheim comes into this matchup struggling, as it has dropped a season high- tying five games in a row and has yet to win since the Olympic break ended. The Ducks were shut out for the second time on their current slide Friday, losing 1-0 to Nashville.

Jonas Hiller stopped 27 shots and the only goal in the contest came on a Predators power play with the Ducks down two men in the opening period. Anaheim, meanwhile, failed to get any of its 31 shots past Predators goaltender Pekka Rinne.

"We didn't really have a glorious number of chances in tonight's hockey game," said Anaheim head coach Randy Carlyle. "It was tight and it seemed they were content playing that way once they got the 5-on-3 goal. They were keeping four guys above the puck as much as possible and trying to block people out. We had some chances. We just weren't able to get one to go into the net for us."

The Ducks, who are 10 points out of a playoff spot, have now matched their 0-2-3 rut from Nov. 29-Dec. 6 and will try to avoid their first six-game slide since Jan. 20-Feb. 2, 2008.

Anaheim, which has been outscored 18-8 on its five-game slide, is 0-2-1 on a seven-game homestand and has lost four in a row as the host since a franchise- record 11-game home winning streak.

Hiller is 0-3-0 with a 3.03 GAA this year versus the Sharks and just 1-8-0 against them lifetime with a 2.49 GAA.

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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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