After suffering yet another convincing loss at the Enterprise Center in St. Louis on Friday night in Game 6, the Winnipeg Jets will host the Blues in a do-or-die Game 7 Sunday evening at Canada Life Centre.

The Jets earned home-ice advantage in this matchup with an incredible 116-point season and will hope it pays dividends as home teams are 6-0 so far in this series. Winnipeg will remain without arguably its best player, Mark Scheifele, who was confirmed out for this game Sunday morning.

I’ll detail the relevant game notes, as well as outline my favourite betting angle below.

Jordan Binnington and the Blues have not had any success playing on the road in this series, but they can certainly draw some confidence from their Stanley Cup-clinching 4-1 win on the road at TD Garden in 2019. Binnington also honed his reputation as a clutch performer with his performance in the 4 Nations Face-Off Gold Medal Game this season, as he made several excellent saves in overtime before Connor McDavid scored the tournament-clinching goal against Connor Hellebuyck.

Dating back to the 2007-08 playoffs, road teams are 34-38 (.435 win percentage) in NHL Game 7s but have significantly outperformed expectations from a betting perspective. A .435 win percentage may not sound great, but it actually is quite strong when you consider how many home teams were the higher seed and therefore typically the superior team, and betting the road team in all of those games would have yielded a +12.8% ROI.

Game 7s have also trended quite strong to the under historically, as referees tend to call games more loosely, while attention to detail defensively has typically become quite high at that point in the series.

The first six games of this series have featured a combined average of 6.83 goals per game, as the Blues have done a surprisingly good job of mustering lofty offensive outputs off of Hellebuyck, but have not been overly sharp defensively. Despite the way the first six games have played out, oddsmakers are still expecting this to be a low-event matchup on average, as the game features a rare total of 5.

The Blues once again got the absolute most out of a relatively small output of chances in Game 6, and did appear to have better luck than the Jets overall. Philip Broberg opened the scoring on a muffed one-timer from fairly deep in the slot, which was fortuitously lobbed in with another high-quality screen out front.

Morgan Barron appeared to tie the game at one early in the second period, but the goal was rightfully called back after Mark Appleton was deemed to be offside.

After a great pass from Broberg out into the deep slot, Nathan Walker scored a go-ahead goal, which certainly could not be blamed on Hellebuyck.

While the first two goals were not on Hellebuyck, Brayden Schenn’s 3-1 marker came on a shot that simply can not go in during an NHL playoff game and forced the Jets to chase the game from two goals down. Cam Fowler then put the game out of reach with a 4-1 tally only one minute later, which came in very familiar fashion on a seeing-eye point shot through a maze of bodies out front.

The Blues managed 11 high-danger scoring chances in Game 6 and generated 2.95 expected goals overall. They did a great job of creating chaos in front of Hellebuyck on shots coming from the point once again, but also benefitted from another ugly performance from Hellebuyck.

The Blues are expected to offer the same lineup as we saw in Game 6 in this matchup, as Dylan Holloway will remain sidelined for certain, while Tyler Tucker is also expected to remain unavailable.

Jets fans have to be feeling a little frustrated that this series has been stretched to a seventh game. They hold a 59.12% expected goal share in the series and have looked to be the sharper team overall, but have received poor play in goal from Hellebuyck, and have also not had as much puck luck as the Blues in terms of chances finding their way in.

Just as the Colorado Avalanche did last postseason, the Blues have found plenty of success generating point shots with numerous forwards out front in this series. It’s very hard to entirely prevent those types of plays from happening, which is what makes them so effective come the playoffs, but aside from that, Winnipeg’s defensive process has looked better than the actual results suggest.

With Scheifele out of the lineup, the Jets’ offensive upside takes a massive hit, and it’s hard to imagine they can find a way to win this game without a sharper performance from Hellebuyck in goal.

Early on in this series it appeared that Hellebuyck’s awful numbers came partly due to the fact that the Blues were able to generate some extremely dangerous chances despite a small output of shots overall, but in the later games of this series it’s been more apparent that Hellebuyck is off his game right now.

Winnipeg’s top line of Kyle Connor, Vladislav Namestnikov, and Gabriel Vilardi controlled the majority of the play in its 8:29 of time-on-ice together in Game 6, finishing with a 74.2% expected goal share. Scheifele’s elite play-making ability was still missing from the top line though, and the ripple effect further down the lineup from having to elevate Namestnikov to the top unit was notable.

The Jets scored zero goals at even strength in Game 6, as both goals came on the power play. Cole Perfetti finally broke through with his first of the series to cash our best bet at +310, and Nino Niederreiter added another power-play marker with the game out of reach in the third period.

Nikolaj Ehlers made a solid return to action and held the second highest expected goal share of any Jets skater, only behind linemate and team captain Adam Lowry.

The Jets have played relatively well overall in this series, and their play has certainly been nothing to be ashamed of. With Scheifele sidelined, the Blues’ top six does look to have more high-end offensive talent and have proven capable of finishing chances at a high rate over the last several months of the regular season and in this series.

It feels hard to bank on Hellebuyck in this extremely high-pressure situation right now, while Binnington has earned a reputation for bringing his best performances into this type of matchup. In terms of a side, I’d have to lean with the Blues considering their +145 price tag.

There does look to be value in going back to the well in backing Perfetti to score at +270 after he finally broke through in Game 6. Perfetti led all skaters in Game 6, generating 1.30 expected goals while looking sharp on the power play and at even strength aloneslide Lowry and Ehlers.

The Jets’ bottom six was not overly effective in Game 6, and we should see Scott Arniel look to deploy his top two units as much as possible in this do-or-die spot with the team’s centre depth currently lacking with Scheifele out of the lineup.