THE HARD COUNT

The Canadiens' path runs through Cole Caufield and Nick Suzuki. Caufield's 51 regular-season goals are the kind of volume that can compress a series in a hurry — and he's backed it up with 5 goals and 7 assists across 17 playoff games. Suzuki has been even better: 16 points (4G, 12A) in 17 games. Montreal has the firepower. The question is in net.

Here's the wrinkle: Jakub Dobes has a .920 save percentage on the road this postseason but just .895 at home. The Bell Centre crowd is supposed to be an advantage — for Dobes, the numbers suggest the opposite. Frederik Andersen needs to be better than the .886 team save percentage Carolina posted in the regular season, but at least he doesn't have to fight his own building.

The angle: the under has moved from +102 to -102, and the moneyline has ticked from -135 to -142 on Carolina. The market is pricing in a tighter, more desperate game from Montreal — the kind where the Bell Centre crowd becomes a tangible factor. Watch whether Montreal can force a low-event game and push this to five.

Two years ago, the Chicago White Sox went 41-121 — the most losses in modern MLB history, breaking the 1962 Mets' record that had stood for 62 years. Today, they're 27-26 and favored at home against the Twins.

Let that sink in. The franchise that was a punchline — the team that had the first, second, AND third longest losing streaks in baseball in 2024 — is sitting above .500 in late May and the market is asking you to lay -131 on them. Connor Prielipp takes the ball for Minnesota against a White Sox lineup that has quietly stopped being a disaster and started being a team.

The rebuild happened faster than anyone projected. What's worth watching is whether the market has overcorrected — Minnesota at +109 has value if this is more regression mirage than real turnaround. But the Win column doesn't lie, and 27-26 from a team that was 41-121 is the single most surprising number on any scoreboard in May.

Houston at 24-31 is seven games under .500 in late May, and the dynasty that produced seven consecutive ALCS appearances has been reduced to feeding Mike Burrows to the wolves on a Wednesday night in Arlington. But the real story is on the other side: Jacob deGrom has a 1.14 ERA at Globe Life Field this season and a 6.00 ERA on the road. At home, in a controlled environment, he hasn't just been good — he's been nearly unhittable.

The interesting question isn't whether deGrom dominates — it's whether the Astros lineup has enough fight left to make the total interesting. Houston's issues aren't pitching-deep or bullpen-thin anymore. The lineup has stopped functioning, and when a lineup has stopped functioning, the opposing starter's raw numbers stop mattering as much as the dysfunction does.