Bryzgalov, Coyotes shut out Hurricanes

Hockey Betting Lines

03/13/2010 - Raleigh, NC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Ilya Bryzgalov made 29 saves to record his NHL- leading eighth shutout, and the Phoenix Coyotes won their fourth straight game with a 4-0 rout of the Carolina Hurricanes.

Lee Stempniak and Martin Hanzal each scored a pair of goals for the Coyotes, who began a four-game road trip on a winning note. Adrian Aucoin netted a pair of assists in the victory.

Stempniak continued to provide a spark since being acquired by Phoenix from Toronto at the trade deadline. The Coyotes are 4-0-0 with him in the lineup, and Stepmniak has five goals in that span, including consecutive multi-goal contests.

Justin Peters allowed all four goals on only 20 shots in the defeat, only Carolina's third in 12 games.

Stempniak's goal four minutes into the game proved to be all Phoenix needed. He caught a loose puck by the left post after several players battled behind the net and stuffed it past Peters before the netminder located the disc.

Exactly 12 minutes after the first goal, Stempniak netted a power-play marker when he took a feed at the top of the left circle, skated to the slot and fired a wrister past Peters.

Bryzgalov made nine saves in the first, and Hanzal made it 3-0 at the 13:50 mark of the second. Shane Doan's pass toward the middle caught a stick and was deflected high into the air; Hanzal settled it right in front of the crease and fired it past Peters.

Carolina's best chance to score came early in the third on a 5-on-3 opportunity, but Bryzgalov made several spectacular glove saves to keep his whitewash intact. Hanzal's accurate one-timer to the lower right corner immediately following the successful penalty kill made it 4-0 to account for the final margin.

Game Notes

Carolina had swept the season series in 2008-09, 2-0...Phoenix finishes its schedule with 10 out of 14 games on the road...Stempniak had only 14 goals in 62 games with the Leafs this season and has a five-game point streak...Hanzal had his first multi-goal game of the season...Bryzgalov's eight shutouts are a single-season career-high. He has 16 for his career.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

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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