BSNblog

Los Angeles

The Kings emerged on the scene this year, but some were even surprised that they ended up with a sixth seed. Los Angeles fell to Vancouver in six games in the first round of the Western Conference finals, but the duo of Drew Doughty and Jack Johnson served notice that they could be the best defensive duo in the league in the next few years, and offensively, they may be next year as they quarterbacked the Kings’ No.1-rated power play that ripped through the Canucks. They’re still a little young: half of their top-six forwards are 25 or younger led by captain Dustin Brown, while Johnson and Doughty are 23 and 20, respectively, and goalie Jon Quick is 24. See what Chicago is doing? That could be the Kings very, very soon.

Washington

The Capitals let a lot of Stanley Cup betting players down when they were upset by Montreal in the first round, as they were the first No.1 seed to fall to a No.8 seed after leading the series three games to one. The Capitals don’t need to make wholesale changes, but the defense could stand to use one more defensive-minded player. The Capitals’ big players will have to think about their efforts. Even though Alex Ovechkin had 10 points, he often appeared frustrated and out of ideas. Alex Semin didn’t score a single goal in 44 shots, and Mike Green had another poor postseason. Also, is Semyon Varlamov a No.1 goaltender in the NHL?

San Jose

If the Sharks were a World Cup betting option, they would be Spain: all the talent to be considered the favorites, but instead, they’re known as the underachievers of the NHL. They did manage to make it to the Western Conference finals before getting swept by Chicago, and it may be time to blow it up. The line of Joe Thornton, Dany Heatley and Patrick Marleau would good in spots, but were outplayed by the second line for most of the playoffs. Heatley just finished his first year in San Jose, and even though he may be the worst of the trio for shying away in big games, the Sharks will probably hang on to Thornton, which leaves Marleau, their former captain. If Rob Blake doesn’t play next year, the Sharks will have to replace him as well. Also, after this year and his performance for Russia against Canada in the Olympics, is Evgeni Nabokov a big-game goaltender? The Sharks could be a different team by the time next season’s online betting odds are released.

Spain (+425): The Spanish won at Euro 2008, but they’ve never finished higher than fourth in the World Cup, and that was way back in 1950. Heading into the tournament, there are fitness concerns over a host of players like Fernando Torres, Cesc Fabregas, Xavi and Andres Iniesta, but Spain still has enough weapons who are healthy, such as David Villa and Xabi Alonso.

Brazil (+450): The big news was Ronaldinho being left out of the squad, but five-time champion Brazil will still be a threat, led by Kaka, Robinho and Luis Fabiano. Under Dunga, Brazil has been less adventurous going forward, but they have one of their best defenses in a long time, and keeper Julio Cesar had a great year in goal for Inter Milan. They’re favored in World Cup Group G betting
in the “Group of Death” with Portugal and the Ivory Coast, which is a good warm-up for the later stages of the tournament.

England (+650): England will be led by Wayne Rooney, who had an amazing season with Manchester United, and the midfield duo of Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard. The defense isn’t that quick in the middle with Rio Ferdinand and John Terry, but they’re solid positionally, although Ferdinand is prone to mental lapses, and many are wondering if the burden of the captaincy will change his game. The biggest question for manager Fabio Capello is in goal, where Robert Green, David James and Joe Hart are still battling for the No.1 spot.

Argentina (+675): Diego Maradona led the team to glory in 1986 as a player, and now he’ll aim to do so as a manager, and he has arguably the best player in the world in Lionel Messi, although Messi hasn’t played as well for Argentina as he has for Barcelona. He should have plenty of help as Diego Milito Gonzalo Higuain and Sergio Aguero and Carlos Tevez all had brilliant seasons for their clubs. Many 2010 World Cup betting picks will include Argentina when it’s all said and done.

The Netherlands (+1200): The Dutch are the darkhorses in this group, and it’s strange to think that they have never won the World Cup, although their philosophy of “total football” lives on today. Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben and Mark van Bommel all played in the Champions League final, and they’ll be counted on in South Africa. However, unless the Dutch can sort out their problems at the back, they won’t get past the top four.

Online sports betting pick: Argentina +675

Indy 500 Odds – Sunday, May 30, 1:00 PM ET

Scott Dixon (+300): The 2008 winner (as well as 2003 and 2008 series champion) is coming off a win at Kansas, and he has finished in the top five in five of his seven trips to the Brickyard. Dixon has led laps in all five of those races, and he’ll probably be up near the front at some point again on May 30th. He led a race-high 73 laps last year.

Helio Castroneves (+400): Castroneves won in his first two Indy 500s in 2000 and 2001, but his win last year was probably the most satisfying when you consider that he was acquitted on tax-evasion charges the week before the race. He’ll be aiming to join A.J. Foyt, Rick Mears and Al Unser Sr. as the only drivers to win the Indy 500 four times, and Castroneves has finished in the top four in six of his nine races at the Brickyard. Essentially, he’s the equivalent of Brazil in World Cup betting.

Dario Franchitti (+450): Franchitti’s Indy win came in the rain-shortened 2007 edition, but he backed up his credentials by winning his second IRL title last year. He’s hit-and-miss at the Brickyard, finishing in the top 10 in four of his six races here, but the only time he finished in the top five was the year he won. He did manage to lead 50 laps before fading to seventh in 2009.

Ryan Briscoe (+500): Briscoe has struggled in the Indy 500 with one top-10 in four appearances here, and while he has started third and second in the last two years, respectively, they have turned into 23rd and 15th-place finishes. Briscoe isn’t off to the best start this season, failing to crack the top 10 in the first five races.

Tony Kanaan (+1000): Kanaan isn’t the favorite that his native Brazil is in the soccer betting
world, but his experience always gives him a chance at Indy, where he’s raced eight times. The problem is luck: Kanaan has three finishes worse than 27th here, including the last two years. In the remaining five races, he has four top-10s, including three inside the top five. If Kanaan can stay out of trouble and avoid any mechanical defects, he has all the tools and talent to scoop up a famous Brickyard win.

Sports Betting pick: Tony Kanaan

After you bet on Preakness Stakes on Saturday, check out the Autism Speaks 400 at Dover International Speedway, also known as the “Monster Mile”. Jimmie Johnson romped to a Dover sweep last year, and he’ll be one of the contenders again, but another driver will get his first win at the concrete jungle.

NASCAR Dover Betting – Sunday, May 16, 1:00 PM ET

Jimmie Johnson (+400): Johnson led 569 of 800 laps at Dover in his dominating sweep of last year, but he’s going to have to find something soon as the No.48 team has struggled since the spoiler replaced the rear wing on the Sprint Cup car at Martinsville, and he’s finished outside the top 30 in two of his last three races.

Denny Hamlin (+800): Someone who isn’t complaining about the spoiler is Hamlin, who has won three of the six races since the spoiler came into play, including last week at Darlington. Hamlin doesn’t have a good track record at Dover with two top-10s in eight trips here, but the No.20 team seems to have the spoiler figured out.

Kurt Busch (+1200): Busch has three top-10s in his last four starts, and he already has a win from Atlanta earlier this year. The No.2 driver has six top-10s in 19 trips to Dover, but he also has five DNFs, which is risky. His younger brother Kyle has better odds (and arguably a better car under him as he is a teammate of Hamlin’s at Joe Gibbs Racing), but Kurt is the play here.

Matt Kenseth (+1500): Taking Kenseth’s odds is like taking Germany’s soccer betting odds in the World Cup: he’s won a championship before, and he’s consistent enough that you can’t count him out. He has two straight 13^th-place finishes, he finished in the top five of both Dover races in 2009, and he has 14 top-10s in 22 trips here, including a win in the 2006 spring race.

Ryan Newman (+2500): Newman picked up his second top-10 in a row last week at Darlington, and he has 10 top-10s in 16 Dover races, including eighth and 10^th-place results last year. Newman also swept the 2003 races at the “Monster Mile”, and he took the checkered flag in the 2004 fall race, so he knows how to get around this track.

Pick: The spoiler has changed things in the Sprint Cup series, and a handful of teams have found an edge. Kurt Busch started off slow with the change, but they’re catching on, and the No.2 team was a weekly threat to win prior to the spoiler being added to the car. With a pair of top-5s under his belt from last year’s Dover races, so with Kurt Busch in your betting picks.

NASCAR Betting – Saturday, May 8, 7:30 PM ET

Jimmie Johnson is listed at +600 with a couple of wins and the best finishing average among active drivers at Darlington, at 6.9 in 11 races. Johnson finished second to teammate Mark Martin here last year, and he swept the 2004 races, which was the final year that Darlington held two races. He’s been solid this year as usual, and outside of the restrictor-plate races at Daytona and Talladega, he has yet to finish worse than 12th in a race.

Jeff Gordon is up there at +600 as well, and he has seven wins in 29 trips to Darlington, most recently in 2007. He came in fifth here last year, and he’s just about due to snap a winless streak that has gone on since last year’s spring race at Texas. The No.24 driver has finished in the top three in three of the last five races, but they still have to work on setting their car up for the short runs that are inevitably popping up at the end of races.

Martin comes in at +1200, and the 51-year-old has 43 races at the “Track Too Tough To Tame” under his belt, notching 26 top-10s and a pair of wins. He’ll be aiming to bounce back from a 25th-place run at Richmond that ended a streak of top-six finishes at three.

Like the Preakness betting odds of any horse ridden by Calvin Borel, you have to check out Greg Biffle at +2000. “The Biff” has led laps in four of the last five races at Darlington, including 117 in last year’s eighth-place run, and he has a pair of wins in nine races here, which came in back-to-back years of 2005 and 2006, although he may be looking for Kasey Kahne to win the pole. In both of Biffle’s wins here, Kahne (who has odds of +2500) took the pole position.

A darkhorse to watch is Juan Pablo Montoya at +2500, even though he’s never cracked the top 10 in three trips to Darlington, including last year’s 20th-place run. Montoya has finished in the top six in three of his last four races, and his 18th-place position in the standings is more down to bad luck, not bad cars. Look for him to be a factor here.

Sports betting pick: Jeff Gordon (+600)

Hawks vs Magic odds – Tuesday, May 4, 8:00 PM ET

The Hawks needed seven games to get rid of pesky Milwaukee, winning the last two games by an average of 17.5 points. Joe Johnson led the way with 20.9 points, while Al Horford put up 15.6 points and 9.9 rebounds. The difference, however, was Jamal Crawford, who had 22 points in the clinching game. Crawford, the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year, struggled to get hot in his playoff debut, but he came around and lifted the Hawks later in the series, when it was most needed. Johnson is going to need help if the Hawks are going to overcome the NBA odds in this contest, and in this series as he averaged 16.3 points in four games against the Magic this year.

The Magic will have been off for eight days by the time Game 1 tips off on Tuesday, after they swept Charlotte in four games. Jameer Nelson showed that he may have been the missing link in Orlando’s run to the Finals last year with 23.8 points, while shooting 42.9% from three-point land. Rashard Lewis had 15.8 points, but the Magic got a disappointing series from Dwight Howard. “Superman” averaged 9.8 points and 9.5 rebounds, along with 5.5 fouls, fouling out of the last two games of the series. A few of the foul calls may have been wrong, but Howard has to be more disciplined and control the fouls that he can because if he’s in the lineup, the Hawks can’t stop him. Howard notched 21.0 points, 16.8 boards and 3.5 blocks against Atlanta this season.

NBA playoff odds will favor the Magic at home, where they have beaten the Hawks in seven of their last 10 meetings, including three in a row. Only a two-point win on March 24th at home saved the Hawks from being swept at the hands of the Magic, and we have to take the Game 6 win in Milwaukee with a grain of salt. The Bucks shouldn’t have even been in that series without Andrew Bogut, and the fact that it went to seven games raises some questions about the Hawks. The Magic rolled through their first-round series like they were supposed to, and we’re banking on Howard not having a series like he did against Charlotte. The Magic will be a little rusty from their eight-day layoff, but their home crowd will pick them up, and the Hawks aren’t a great road team anyway.

Sports betting pick: Orlando

That goal could even be a mathematician this weekend if his pursuer live, Manchester United, distanced provisionally to four points, lost in their meeting in Sunderland.

Although the 'Red Devils' adding up the three points, Chelsea has it all with a view to celebrate in their stadium, next weekend against Wigan, the national championship.

The goals of the triumph of the 'Blues' came through two of his figures, the Ivorian Didier Drogba (minute 33) and Frank Lampard (54), who sealed the scoring rule in London on the lawn, where they played with an air of champions and were able to realize their superiority.

"We have taken an important step towards the title. We played very well and deserved this victory. We are very happy because playing against Liverpool is complicated, but we did very well tactically," said Italy coach Carlo Ancelotti.

His victory at Anfield also settled the last hope for Liverpool to play the online sports betting Champions League, a competition that had always come from its presence in the 2004-2005 edition, and closes one weeks horrible for the 'Reds', eliminated on Thursday in the semifinals of the European League.

As a symbol of the descent into the hell of the team, Steven Gerrard reluctantly starred in Chelsea's first goal when a poor pass to his goalkeeper Pepe Reina was used by Drogba, very attentive, to open the account in 33 .

Without ability to react, the pupils of Rafael Benitez, who could have directed their last home match at Anfield, returned to show their worst side and Chelsea scored in 54, through pass from Lampard to Frenchman Nicolas Anelka, and played the rest of the game with confidence.

During the game, both Gallo and the Ivory Coast striker Salomon Kalou were given good opportunities to extend the lead, but both the Queen and Brazilian midfielder Lucas Leiva, who saved a little bit before it crossed the line, prevented the scoring.

In Sunderland, Manchester United will be forced to keep track to keep options on the last day, where in any case will depend on a slip of Chelsea against Wigan at Stamford Bridge and his good result at home to Stoke.

Throughout the week, from Old Trafford had relied on the professionalism of the players of Liverpool to give the maximum in the game this Sunday, despite the deep historical rivalries that keep the two big clubs of northern England.