Sweden's Filip Gustavsson has a 3.85 goals against average and a .889 save percentage over his ten appearances, making Reinhart likely option to score
The Four Nations Face Off kicks off Wednesday with a pair of matchups including Canada versus Sweden and the United States playing Finland. The elite showcase of the best hockey players in the world should excite all fans of the sport and we've looked up some ways that you can hopefully profit on the event.
For bettors, this matchup provides a chance to capitalize on some of our recent strong trends, like our 34-30 record on our last 64 picks and our 16-9 record on our last 25 moneyline picks.
All betting lines are from Bet365 and are subject to change. Hockey is a difficult sport to predict so please gamble responsibly.
Four Nations Face-Off - Team Canada vs Team Sweden Best Bets:
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It's hard to exactly predict what will happen as we've never seen these teams assembled before but what we can do is look at players histories and recent performances leading up to this game. The two netminders in Canada's Jordan Binnington and Sweden's Filip Gustavsson have both struggled as of late.
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Since January 7th, Binnington has a 4-5-1 record with a 3.17 goals against average and a .889 save percentage in ten starts while Gustavsson has been worse with a 3.85 average and an identical .889 save percentage in ten appearances. These two countries will have elite units on both ends of the ice but I expect a soft goal or two to squeeze through and be enough for this game to hit the over.
The scoring should start with Canada's top line of Connor McDavid, Sam Reinhart and Mitch Marner. McDavid is known as one of the best playmakers in the sport and has excelled in matchups against Gustavsson with a pair of goals and five assists in three career games against him.
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This should open things up for a near-60 goal scorer last season in Reinhart. He will get time with McDavid as well as Marner, who ranks third in assists this season with 55, which should help give the lethal shooter more than enough chances to score.
Reinhart will also be on the first powerplay unit that may go down in history as one of the best with McDavid joining him alongside Colorado's Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Maker plus modern day hockey legend Sidney Crosby at centre.
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I wouldn't count out the Swedish offence as they also have elite playmakers like William Nylander, Jesper Bratt and Lucas Raymond. The top three Swedish scorers have a combined 71 goals so far this season and should prove to be a problem for Binnington. They should be able to keep this game close enough with both goalies struggling and cover the puck line at a minimum.