Garon solid in net as Blue Jackets down Ducks

Hockey Betting Lines

03/10/2010 - Anaheim, CA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Mathieu Garon was strong with 36 saves to lead the Columbus Blue Jackets to a 5-2 win over the Anaheim Ducks at Honda Center.

Fedor Tyutin, Jakub Voracek and Antoine Vermette all recorded a goal and two assists for the Blue Jackets, who halted a five-game winless skid. Derek Dorsett and Derick Brassard each added a goal in the victory.

Lubomir Visnovsky and Ryan Getzlaf scored for the Ducks, who remained without a win (0-3-1) since the Olympic break and will continue their seven-game homestand on Friday against Nashville.

Jonas Hiller allowed three goals on 20 shots but was pulled in the second period. Curtis McElhinney, who was acquired last week from Calgary for Vesa Toskala, turned aside seven shots in relief. Ducks forward Bobby Ryan assisted on both goals.

Trailing 3-0 in the third period, the Ducks came to life with a pair of goals to make it interesting.

After Visnovsky's blazing slap shot from the slot brought Anaheim within two at the 9:11 mark, the Ducks made it 3-2 with 5:04 remaining in regulation when Getzlaf tallied. Getzlaf fought for control along the rear boards, drifted with the puck into the left circle and beat Garon with a wrister through traffic.

However, any chance for an Anaheim equalizer was essentially erased when Ducks veteran Saku Koivu was whistled for hooking with 2:31 to play. On the ensuring power play, Vermette's 21st goal -- a backhander between the pads from the top of the crease -- sealed the victory with 1:58 on the clock.

Brassard capped the scoring in the waning seconds.

The visitors grabbed a 1-0 lead at the 8:55 mark of the opening period. A shot from the right point was saved by Hiller, but the puck was loose in front. After several rebound attempts, Dorsett was finally able to poke the puck over the goal line from the top of the crease amid a scramble.

In the second period, a power-play goal pushed the Columbus edge to two. Skating 5-on-4, Voracek, from a sharp angle at the base of the left circle, found room over the short-side shoulder of Hiller with a laser wrist shot at 8:14.

Less than five minutes later, the Blue Jackets moved ahead by three goals. Tyutin's shot from the top of the left circle hit bodies in front of the net and the disc caromed directly back to Tyutin, whose momentum at that point had carried him into the lower portion of the circle. Tyutin's second attempt made it past a screened Hiller at 13:07.

Game Notes

The Ducks have dropped three straight and six of their last nine home games against Columbus, which is now 4-3-2 with interim head coach Claude Noel...The Blue Jackets played without All-Star forward Rick Nash, who left Monday's game against Los Angeles with a lower-body injury. Fellow forward Kristian Huselius also missed the game with a hand injury...Anaheim ended scoreless on seven power-play chances, while the visitors were 3-for-6 with the extra skater.

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What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.

FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.