The Rangers have the better record, but Columbus has the favorite’s price. That’s the interesting tension heading into Saturday’s matchup: New York is 6-3, the Blue Jackets are 2-3, and both are coming off games in which they allowed seven goals. Our projections give Columbus a shooting advantage, while the recent goaltending comparison offers a reason not to dismiss the Rangers.
The case for Columbus at -135
DraftKings’ current moneyline has Columbus at -135 and New York at +114. Our analysis gives the Blue Jackets the stronger attack—a B grade compared with the Rangers’ C—and our shot projections call for about 29 shots for Columbus against 25 for New York. That supports a plausible path for the home favorite: put more shots on net and make New York answer with fewer of its own.
The Rangers’ recent results still deserve weight. They beat Vancouver 6-2 and Tampa Bay 4-1 before Thursday’s loss in New Jersey. Across their nine games this season, flat one-unit moneyline bets on New York returned a historical profit of 2.51 units. Their winning record has also delivered a positive betting return, though that doesn’t settle whether +114 is attractive here.
The goaltending comparison pushes back
Dylan Garand’s five most recent appearances for New York produced a .915 save percentage. That sample includes Thursday’s rough outing, when he allowed four goals on 13 shots before leaving the game. Rangers turnovers and a Garand puck-handling mistake contributed to New Jersey’s 7-1 win. His broader recent sample looks considerably better than that one night.
Jet Greaves has a .874 save percentage across four appearances for Columbus this season. He allowed at least three goals in each of his three starts, then stopped all four shots he faced in relief during Tuesday’s 7-3 loss to Florida. Cam Talbot allowed six goals before Greaves entered, an important distinction when weighing that result. Columbus’s latest seven-goal loss wasn’t a seven-goal outing by Greaves.
Those are small samples, but they sharpen the matchup. Columbus has the stronger projected shooting volume; Garand has the better recent save percentage. A modest favorite’s price needs to be considered alongside both.
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What that means for the 6.5-goal total
The latest blowouts make a high-scoring game easy to imagine, but the total deserves a closer look than those scores alone. Our projections call for roughly 54 combined shots, so the scoring case at 6.5 leans more on how those opportunities are converted than on a particularly busy night for the goalies. Garand’s five-appearance save percentage is a meaningful counterweight to his last game.
On the other hand, Greaves’s three starts have each included at least three goals against. New York’s recent four- and six-goal wins also show why its one-goal performance Thursday shouldn’t define the scoring outlook. Columbus conceded four power-play goals in Tuesday’s loss, too, so that collapse wasn’t just a story about goaltending. Our projections give the teams similar numbers of power-play opportunities here; whether Columbus handles those situations better matters more than assuming Tuesday’s damage will repeat.
At 6.5, the tension is between those routes to scoring and a fairly restrained shooting projection. The recent results provide reasons to take the scoring risk seriously, but neither seven-goal loss is a reliable template for this matchup.
The key to the price
Columbus’s case rests on the stronger attack and an expected edge in shots, not its early record. New York’s counterweight is tangible: better results so far and a better recent goaltending sample. The price therefore asks Columbus to turn its extra shooting volume into enough production to overcome that difference. Garand’s response after Thursday’s rough outing is central to that test, while Columbus needs to avoid the special-teams damage that inflated its latest loss. Those are more useful factors to weigh than treating either blowout as a new normal.
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