In the weekly piece “Saturday’s NHL Picks,” Flip Livingstone breaks down at least three of Saturday’s NHL games where he will either pick a winner or make an over/under bet on total goals.
Notch's NHL picks for Saturday, November 14th.
Last week proved to be another terrific week. Thunder and I managed to call 10 out of 15 games each, including a BOS-OTT tie, and the Avalanche beating the Wings by two at home. Unfortunately the Sabres scored with 17 seconds left against the Lightning from the corner, and Vincent Lecavalier clanked a backhand off the crossbar to deny me over $300. Thunder, after getting her ID checked (she’s six, so 36 in dog years) at the convenience store, should have stayed away from the battle of Alberta, as the Oilers ruined her gambling debut. The season is roughly 15 games old so hopefully some teams are starting to settle into a groove. 13 games on tap for tonight, damn I love Saturday nights!
Notch is up this week - running down the Saturday NHL games and giving you his winners...
Terrific start out of the gate last week, much improved over last season’s finish. My 8-5 record is a nose ahead of Thunder’s 7-6 record from last Saturday. The snowy weather seemed to be pivotal in my first week victory, with more snow on the ground this Saturday morning; could I possibly make it two in a row?? Only one way to find out on the best hockey day of the year (which is really any day all 30 teams are in action) as some poolies will cheer and rejoice in their 15th round selection posting a 3 pt. game and we won’t hear the end of it until Christmas, while others will drown their tears with a multitude of beers.
My debut picks for the 2009/10 season went better than expected. It is always tough to gauge a team by their preseason results (see Vancouver). For my first week selections, I went with coaching matchups with a lot of my picks as well as goalies that seemed to be in midseason form (see Miller). My record for the first week was 7-4. Within those seven wins, I got two plus (+) predictions correct to hopefully increase your payouts if you wagered some of your hard earned cash.
It’s great to be back for another year. I’ve spent most of the summer trying to drink away the sorrow of receiving a beat down last season from my four legged counterpart. Hopefully Thunder gets distracted with all the snow we’re getting today. It’s time to start fresh with a case of beer for all of the Saturday night action, and let’s hope I still have a prayer after the 7pm starts!
The season is back, and with it are the weekly picks. Marty "Mapletree" Kwiaton and Steve "Notch" Johnson have returned and will alternate weeks for their game picks. Notch will kick things off for Saturday, October 3, 2009.
Whoa - based on last week’s performance I certainly shouldn’t quit the day job. Thunder continued her winning ways going 6-5 and now has amassed a 42-35 record on the year; eat your heart out Maggie the Monkey. We don’t need to get into specifics about how my week went, let’s just say that the highlight was choosing the NYI as winners... pathetic!!
Anyway, barring a miracle this week Thunder pretty much has this wrapped up. Look at her stoic face just beaming with hockey wisdom, maybe someday it could be me haha. Anyways, it’s a busy final Saturday with 13 games on the schedule, with lots of matinee games and a handful of meaningless tilts as teams look to start booking their tee times. Perhaps teams should hire professional golf cart drivers this summer to avoid players blowing out their knees while trying to apply that pesky parking brake...
My so-called “dominance” didn’t last for very long. Thunder managed to put me back in my place selecting eight of 11 winners, while a couple of inappropriate “+” picks see me at 5-6 for last week. Thunder is seven games ahead on the year, with an impressive record of 36-30. Wow, that’s a lot of ground to make up with only two weeks to go. I’m not overly concerned and usually favour the role of the underdog. Nonetheless, I have a really good feeling about this week... wait, I’ve tried that before and it hasn’t worked. Let’s try this angle - this week is going to...suck, so let’s get going with 11 games on the schedule...
Last week saw another small victory for the good guy, picking 4 out of 8 winners, including the Atlanta/Tampa Bay tie. Thunder had an off week picking only 2 winners, however it has been suggested that she overlooked her hockey picks and devoted too much of her focus to going ice fishing on Saturday. She still won over the home crowd with her winning Leafs pick over Montreal at the Bell Centre. With only 4 different selections out of the 11 games this Saturday night this has the potential to make one of us look really smart or really stupid… Plenty of good matchups so let’s get it going:
