As the NHL regular season draws to a close there isn’t a hotter team in the league than the Vegas Golden Knights (35-11-2) who visit the Arizona Coyotes (21-24-5) on Friday.
Vegas has racked up 10 straight victories with nine of them coming in regulation time. Bookmaker Bovada has the odds at -135 for the Golden Knights to notch another win in 60 minutes. The odds are at +125 for the road team to fly out of the gates and win the first period.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: April 29th, 5:00 P.M. (EST)
Peter DeBoer’s team went through an unexpected cold spell at the start of the month with a season-worst three-game losing streak, but they have dropped just one game in 12 outings since then crushing teams left, right and center.
The Knights, who started their current streak with a 7-4 victory over Arizona, have scored at least four goals in eight games during their current hot streak and seven of the wins have come by at least a three-goal difference.
The franchise-record winning streak has given the Golden Knights a chance to compete for their first-ever Presidents’ Trophy as they overtook the Carolina Hurricanes for the top spot in the league with Wednesday’s 5-2 victory against Colorado.
Compared to their divisional rivals, the Coyotes have gone in the opposite direction lately. They are 2-9-0 in their past 11 outings giving up a lot of goals and struggling for offense.
Arizona still has a chance to make the playoffs, but they have lost a lot of ground during their recent slide allowing St. Louis to replace them as the fourth-best team in the West Division.
Generating scoring chances is a huge issue for the Coyotes as Rick Tocchet’s team is averaging only 27.1 shots per game, which is the second-worst mark in the league.
Goaltender Darcy Kuemper carried the side during the first half of the season, but he then missed over a month of action with a lower-body injury and hasn’t been at his best since returning to the lineup on April 16.
The injury bug has been stuck on the Coyotes all season as just when Kuemper got back healthy again winger Conor Garland, who is among the team’s top scorers, suffered a lower-body injury and that has sidelined him for multiple weeks.
The team has scored just seven goals in three games since Garland’s injury and it will be very tough to get the goals flowing here as well with Vegas boasting the league’s best defense with a 2.15 goals-against average.
