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04/06/2007 - St. Louis, MO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Nathan Gerbe had two goals and two assists as the Boston College Eagles reached the championship game by defeating the North Dakota Fighting Sioux, 6-4, in the Frozen Four.
Boston College will next due battle with Michigan State, which advanced to its first championship game since 1987 with a 4-2 win over Maine earlier on Thursday.
Dan Bertram also scored twice for the Eagles (29-11-1), while netminder Cory Schneider finished with 26 saves.
Chris Porter scored two goals and T.J. Oshie had a goal and two assists for the Fighting Sioux, who were seeking their first title since 1997. Philippe Lamoureux ended with 39 saves in net for North Dakota.
With the score tied 2-2 after two periods, Boston College took the lead with seven minutes left in the third when Gerbe skated through the North Dakota defense and found Ben Smith for the score.
After a turnover behind the Boston College net, Oshie scored a short-handed goal to tie the game with 4:38 remaining, but just 32 seconds later, Gerbe scored his second of the game on a one-timer from the slot to put the Eagles back in front for good.
Joe Rooney's empty-net goal with 50 seconds left made it 5-3 for Boston College, but Porter scored his second goal of the game on a North Dakota power play and Lamoureux was pulled for the extra attacker.
Gerber, though, iced the game with another empty net goal to seal the win.
<< Talbot lifts Penguins to crucial win over Senators
Ottawa, ON (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Maxime Talbot's goal with only 10 seconds
remaining in regulation lifted the Pittsburgh Penguins to a dramatic and
critical 3-2 win over the Ottawa Senators at Scotiabank Place.
Michel Ouellet and
<< Backstrom and Wild shutout Edmonton
St. Paul, MN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Niklas Backstrom made 22 saves, recording his
second consecutive shutout and fifth of the season as the Minnesota Wild
blanked the Edmonton Oilers, 3-0, at XCel Energy Center.
Mark Parrish, Keith Carne
<< Heat overcome Cavs in OT
Cleveland, OH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jason Kapono's three-pointer late in
overtime gave Miami a lead it never relinquished as the Heat edged Cleveland,
94-90, and clinched a playoff berth at Quicken Loans Arena.
Antoine Walker scored
<< Islanders stay alive with win over Leafs
Uniondale, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jason Blake scored the go-ahead goal 3:46
into the third period and the New York Islanders kept their slim playoff hopes
alive with a 5-2 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs at Nassau Coliseum.
Aaron Asham and M
Rice basketball player dies in stabbing >>
Houston, TX (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jonathan Bailey, a walk-on member of the Rice
basketball team, was killed Thursday morning.
The Houston Chronicle reports Bailey, who turned 22 on Wednesday, was stabbed
to death after a confrontation at
Red Wings fall to Blackhawks in shootout but still clinch Central >>
Chicago, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Patrick Sharp scored in the fourth round of the
shootout to lead the Chicago Blackhawks to a 3-2 win over the Detroit Red
Wings in the opener of a home-and-home set at United Center.
In the fourth round,
D'backs down Nats behind Young, Hudson >>
Washington, DC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Chris Young knocked in a pair of runs and
Orlando Hudson homered and scored twice as Arizona held on for a 4-3 win over
Washington in the opener of a four-game set.
Edgar Gonzalez (1-0) carried the mo
Hejduk's hat trick keeps Avs' playoff hopes alive >>
Vancouver, BC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Milan Hejduk's hat trick accounted for all of
Colorado's goals as the Avalanche kept their post-season hopes alive with a
3-1 victory over Vancouver.
Paul Stastny picked up an assist on all three Hejduk talli
“You play to win the game!”
Those are the words of notoriously intense head coach Herman Edwards. Unfortunately, from a bettors’ perspective, most coaches don’t feel that way about the NFL preseason. August is a time to evaluate young players, finalize the depth chart and pray your star players stay healthy.
The trick to making money during the exhibition schedule is identifying coaches – like Edwards – who can’t stand losing even when there's nothing on the line.
The New York Jets betting won 15 of 21 preseason games and went 14-7 against the spread (ATS) during Edwards’s five-year tenure with the club. In his first season as the Kansas City Chiefs field boss, the team improved from 0-4 to 2-2.
Identifying win-a-holics like Edwards is a good start if you plan betting the preseason – even though most say you shouldn’t ... but what the hell do they know anyway?
Here’s a brief rundown of two teams that have a habit of winning during the second-stringers’ season, and another club that has a good chance of exceeding this year.
Playing in the media hub of North America can be stressful but the press can’t write anything negative about the way Tom Coughlin’s boys play in the preseason. The Giants won and covered all four games last summer, improving their record to 7-1 both straight up (SU) and against the spread over the last two years.
Coughlin has shown he’s not afraid to give his starters more time in the second preseason game than most of his colleagues, no doubt one of the reasons his team has been so dominant.
Bettors can count on America’s team early on. The Cowboys are 14-6 both SU and ATS since 2002 in warm-up contests. Former coach Bill Parcells, the coach of the team the last four years, has an intimidating, in-your-face presence – surely a reason Dallas has had so much early success.
The Big Tuna won’t be strolling the sidelines with looks of disgust, but new coach Wade Phillips will be anxious to make a good first impression for owner Jerry Jones.
Dallas plays the Indianapolis Colts and the Denver Broncos before things get serious. They then face the Houston Texans in their third contest (the game starters see most game time) and finish off with the Minnesota Vikings.
Expect a Dallas team able to walk away with another 3-1 preseason record.
This team scored a league-worst 12 offensive touchdowns last season, so the rookies and veterans each have something to prove. There’s a bounty of first-unit jobs up for grabs and plenty of bodies competing for those slots.
First-time head coach Lane Kiffin will be eager to impress an owner who employs the philosophy, “Just win, baby!”
The 32-year-old Kiffin has to command respect from a locker room full of players older than him. All of these factors should lead to purpose in preseason.
Don’t forget: before playing like a team that belonged in NFL Europe, Oakland went 4-1 (both SU and ATS) in exhibition games.
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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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