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Avs hope to continue dominance of Blues

Hockey Betting Lines

03/16/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Strong play on the road this season has kept the St. Louis Blues in contention for a postseason berth. The club hasn't been able to achieve the same success at home, however, and it's had all kinds of trouble when facing the Colorado Avalanche during this 2009-10 campaign.

Colorado will try for a season sweep of the Blues when the Northeast Division contenders head to the Scottrade Center this evening for a key Western Conference clash.

St. Louis returns home after performing well on an important six-game road trip to start out the team's post-Olympic break schedule. The Blues finished 4-2-0 on the swing, although they came up short against Minnesota in Sunday's finale.

The Wild scored three unanswered goals in the first period en route to a 4-2 triumph, which left St. Louis at a still-impressive 20-11-4 as the visitor this season.

The Blues are just 12-16-5 as the home team, however, but did win its last three tests at the Scottrade Center prior to the league's hiatus for the Olympics.

St. Louis, which plays eight of its final 14 regular-season games on home ice, will need to improve upon that lackluster record in order to achieve a second straight playoff appearance. The Blues enter tonight's tilt in 10th place in the West and seven points behind rival Detroit for the conference's eighth and final postseason slot.

"We're not gaining ground, everyone around us is winning," said Blues forward Keith Tkachuk after Sunday's loss. "This really hurts, no question about it. Some of the teams won [Sunday] too, so it's frustrating. We have to go on a serious run to get into the playoffs."

St. Louis could also use a better performance out of No. 1 goaltender Chris Mason than he gave against the Wild. The usually-steady backstop was yanked after allowing three goals on only seven shots in the opening period.

Mason has also struggled mightily when facing the Avalanche this season, with the veteran netminder having given up a whopping 13 goals (a 7.23 GAA) in the Blues' three defeats to Colorado in 2009-10. In the most recent meeting between the teams, Mason stopped just 11-of-15 chances before exiting early in the second period of a 7-3 loss in Denver on March 6.

Chris Stewart netted his first career hat trick and added an assist in that contest, and the Avs forward came up with the go-ahead goal late in the second period of his team's 5-3 triumph at Dallas on Sunday. The win was the second in a row for Colorado, which currently occupies the No. 6 spot in the West and trails first-place Vancouver by five points in the Northwest Division race.

Paul Stastny scored a pair of goals in Sunday's victory and has amassed 12 points (4 goals, 8 assists) over a seven-game point streak. Teammate Peter Mueller, acquired in a trade-deadline deal with Phoenix on March 3, has also notched a point in seven straight outings and has racked up two goals and six assists over his first six games with the Avalanche.

Goaltender Craig Anderson made a big contribution as well to Sunday's win, matching a career-high with 48 saves on the afternoon. The offseason pickup is 2-0-0 with a 2.50 goals against average in two starts versus St. Louis earlier this season, but wasn't between the pipes for Colorado's 4-0 blanking of the Blues at the Scottrade Center on December 7. Backup Peter Budaj got the call in that one and turned aside all 35 shots he faced.

In injury news for the Avalanche, forwards Cody McLeod and Stephane Yelle each exited Sunday's win in the first period after sustaining leg injuries and are questionable to play tonight.

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Oilers hoping to end longtime suffering in Minnesota >>
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Sharks to pay a visit to slumping Stars >>
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Ohio State extends Tressel's contract again >>
Columbus, OH (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Ohio State has extended the contract of head football coach Jim Tressel an additional two years. Under the terms of a previous extension signed in 2008, Tressel had been under contract at Ohio State until Ja

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.