ASA's 10* NHL Game of the Month
(NHL) Dallas vs. Colorado, 08/24/2020 9:45 PM, Score: 5 - 2
Money Line: -141.00 Colorado (Home)
Result: Loss
ASA TOP PLAY 10* on Colorado Avalanche Money Line (-) over Dallas Stars, Monday at 9:45 PM ET

Opportunities to take a very good team off an ugly loss are generally few and far between and so when that opportunity arises you want to take full advantage. This is one of those cases as the Avalanche are absolutely one of the favorites to win the Stanley Cup this year but came out flat in Game One of this series and the Stars blitzed them early and Colorado never fully recovered in that game. They also saw goalie Philipp Grubauer suffer a leg injury and he is expected to miss some time now. That is part of what is impacting this line but Pavel Francouz now gets the call between the pipes and he was excellent this season (21-7 with a .923 save percentage). Also, in his first two starts of this post-season he has allowed a total of just 2 goals in 2 games. One of those starts was in the round robin against this Dallas team and he shut out the Stars in a 4-0 Avalanche win! Backing up Grubauer is a veteran in Michael Hutchinson so we are comfortable with the Avs goal-tending situation entering this game. The Stars are still without Ben Bishop so it has been Anton Khudobin between the pipes. He has allowed 3 or more goals in 5 of his 8 post-season appearances. He is a solid goalie but the Avalanche have scored 7 goals on 71 shots against him in this post-season (he was on the wrong end of the aforementioned 4-0 round robin game). The Avalanche have now lost 3 games in the Edmonton bubble. After the first two losses they responded with a win each time and those two victories came by a combined score of 10 to 1. The loss to the Stars in Game 1 of this series will actually prove to be a good thing for Colorado as it is the wake up call they needed to know that things will not come easy in the post-season. While only about half the players "showed up" in the assessment by their head coach in Game 1, you can expect "all hands on deck" for a very motivated Avs team that can't wait to get back on the ice to make up for Saturday's poor effort. There is excellent line value with the Avalanche here as a moderately priced favorite after the line moved from the -160 range to as low as -140 this morning. The fact is that the Stars are getting a little too much respect at this point! We'll take advantage and grab the value...lay it! ASA TOP PLAY 10* Colorado Avalanche on the money line in late night action Monday.