Preds climb up ladder in West with SO win over Blues

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04/10/2010 - Nashville, TN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Martin Erat scored the lone goal of the shootout as the Nashville Predators closed out their regular season with a 2-1 win over the St. Louis Blues.

In the second round, Erat skated in on net and put a wrister into the right corner. Brad Boyes was the last chance for St. Louis, but his shot rang off the post.

Jason Arnott scored the lone goal while Pekka Rinne stopped 33 shots for the Predators (47-29-6), who are tied with Detroit for fifth in the Western Conference. The Predators are also a point ahead of Los Angeles. The Red Wings and Kings finish out their seasons Sunday.

David Backes had the goal and Ty Conklin made 35 stops for the Blues (40-32-10), who closed out their season by dropping two of their final three games.

St. Louis winger Keith Tkachuk was scratched from what would have been his final contest. The 38-year-old announced his retirement at the conclusion of the season on Wednesday.

The first two periods passed scoreless as Conklin turned aside 26 shots while Rinne made 19 saves.

Nashville, though, got on the board at the 5:26 mark of the third. Shea Weber skated into the St. Louis zone down the right wing and from the outside right circle he sent a pass to the slot where Arnott one-timed it home.

Just under five minutes later, St. Louis tied the game. Backes held the puck at the left circle and sent it to the slot for Boyes, who sent the puck back to Backes for the wrister home.

Game Notes

Tkachuk finishes his career with 538 goals and 527 assists over 1,201 games. He is one of four NHL players to total 1,000 points and 2,000 penalty minutes...Nashville took five of six from the Blues in the season-series...The Predators finished the season with 100 points, the third time in team history the club has reached that mark. However, the team has yet to win a playoff series.

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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.

Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"

A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."

Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.

In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.

"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."

Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.

But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"

Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.

This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.

Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.

In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.

No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.

And that's all any bettor can ask for.

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