Handicapper Art Aronson of AAA Sports Plays Free Picks & Best Bets

This is a 7* on TAMPA BAY 

Just like last year, Tampa Bay will face the Islanders for the right to move on to the Stanley Cup Finals. Last year’s Eastern Conference Final was won by the Lightning in six games as they went on to win the whole thing. That series was played in a bubble. This time TB has the home ice edge, a nice deal for them as they were 21-7 at home in the regular season. While they’ve got a better record on the road than at home in the postseason, don’t think for a second the Lightning didn’t want home ice advantage in this series. The Islanders have a much better record at home than on the road. New York has also fallen behind two games to one in both series thus far. Tampa Bay jumped out to 2-0 series leads against Florida and Carolina. Both teams are averaging just over 3.5 goals/game in the playoffs. But the Islanders average only 2.2 goals per game on the road for the season. They’ve also allowed 37.7 shots/game in these playoffs. Unlike last year’s Conference Finals, Steven Stamkos is healthy for the Lightning. He has 13 points in 11 playoff games. Vasilevskiy (.934 postseason save percentage) is the best goalie in this series. Play on TAMPA BAY

AAA

This is a 10* on OVER

The Phoenix Suns had not made the playoffs in over a decade entering 2020-21. But they had no problem ending the league’s second longest postseason drought, going 51-21 and finishing behind only the Jazz in the Western Conference standings. One more win and they’re in the Conference Finals (against either Utah or the Clippers), which is how far they made it in their last postseason run with Steve Nash back in 2010. We know we can count on the Suns to score tonight. They’ve reached 113 points in five straight games and average 114.6 points/game for the year. It’s Denver that’s been a problem for Over bettors the last two games. They’ve averaged just 100 points/game. That’s well below their season average. They average 117.5 per game at home. It was a 41.1 FG% in Game 3 as Nikola Jokic’s teammates didn’t step up to support him on the night he was awarded the league’s MVP award. While the Under is 2-0 in the previous two games, it’s been close both times. Denver’s role players are likely to step up tonight as the season is on the line. That’s how this one goes Over. The Nuggets are 10-5 Over after a loss by 10 or more points. Play on OVER

AAA

This is a 10* on HOUSTON

The Astros and Twins have split the first two games of this series. We like the road team, behind Framber Valdez, to take the rubber match and series. This will be Valdez’s fourth start in 2021. So far he has faced Boston twice and San Diego. He has not allowed more than one run in any of the starts and has gone progressively deeper into games. He went 7 ⅓ last week at Fenway, struck out eight and walked no one. If Valdez can contain two of the highest scoring teams in baseball, surely he can do the same to a Twins team whose season has generally been pretty miserable. Minnesota has won back to back games only one time in June. That was against Kansas City. Since the first series of the year, there’s been only one other time besides KC where the Twins beat the same team on consecutive days. That was a three-game sweep of Baltimore. Pineda has lasted a total of 7 ⅓ innings his last two starts for the Twins. Houston has yet to lose twice in a row this month. Won’t happen here. This is a very attractive price on the better side. Play on HOUSTON

AAA

This is an 8* on OVER

Colorado continues to be an absolute horror show on the road. They are 5-26 away from Coors Field. Yesterday was even worse than usual, which is really saying something, as they lost 10-3 to the Reds. The last three days have seen them outscored 32-12 including 21-8 in the two games in Cincinnati. The Rockies have now hooked up with the Reds six times in 2021 and at least 11 runs have been scored in every game. Four of those were in Coors, but the two here in the Queen City have seen 16 and 13 total runs scored. So you can’t just attribute the scoring to Denver. The Reds have horrible pitching; they’ve allowed more runs than all but two NL teams (Colorado being one of them). Tony Santillan is being called into duty for his first career big league start on Sunday. While it may seem tough to make a projection on him for this game, we know the Over is 21-8-1 for the Reds after a game where they scored five or more runs. They got to 10 yesterday without even hitting a single home run. It was their 10th game this season scoring 10 or more runs. The Reds give up more than six runs per game at home. Senzatela has a 6.75 ERA and 1.90 WHIP on the road for Colorado. This will clearly be a high-scoring affair. Play on OVER

AAA