NHL Betting: Dallas Stars at Buffalo Sabres

Tonight marks the first and only NHL betting matchup of the season for the Dallas Stars and Buffalo Sabres. Buffalo has got their ship righted after a bit of a skid heading into and out of the Olympic break. Head-to-head the Sabres have won the last four contests with the most recent coming on January 15th, 2009, a 5-4 shootout victory in Dallas. Stars fans might remember that one as their team was up 3-0 in the second period and 4-2 in the third before Buffalo notched two goals 15 seconds apart to send it to overtime.

That’s in the past, and Dallas is fresh off a 4-3 shootout victory over the Washington Capitals in which Marty Turco was easily the first, second and third stars. The score was 2-0 after two periods and the Stars were being outshot 42-16, so this one could have easily been a 5 or 6 goal margin.

When it was all said and done, he had turned back a career-high 49 shots, many of which were quality scoring chances off rebounds and point blank shots, and then stopped four more in the shootout for the victory. It was one of those games that Dallas had no business winning, but their goaltender just stole one for them.

"I don't care if I see one shot cause it's all about the win", said Turco. "We made some great plays tonight to have a chance in the third period and the guys came through, especially on the power play. This was a big win for us and now we can use it to turn things around."

Dallas really needed a win like that to help build some momentum. They came out of the break with three straight losses and will be looking to keep the ball rolling with their first victory in Buffalo in over 12 years.

Buffalo is coming off consecutive overtime victories and are in a position to win three in a row for the first time since a six-game winning streak that spanned the end of December and into January.

The big reason why is their back-stopper, Ryan Miller. The US silver medalist is 2-1-0 with a 1.64 GAA in his three starts since the Winter Olympics. Sunday night he turned away 35 shots en route to a 2-1 win over their New York State rivals, the Rangers. Two nights previous, he came up big against another Eastern Conference rival, making 27 saves in a 3-2 win over Philadelphia.

Below are some NHL betting trends for this matchup:

• Home team is 6-2 in the last 8 meetings.
• Over is 5-2-1 in the last 8 meetings.
• Stars are 1-4-1 in the last 6 meetings in Buffalo.
• Stars are 0-4 in the last 4 meetings.

Miller is going to put this team on his back and the win against Philly and the next triumph at Madison Square Garden was what the Sabres needed to really get the ball rolling. Snapping the 0-6-2 slide that dating back to January 18th was the first step, now they’re going to look to put some distance between them and the Ottawa Senators in the Northeast Division.

The Stars can’t expect that kind of performance from Turco every night, so at -175, I’d play the Sabres.

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