The second- and third-place teams in the NHL’s Atlantic Division will square off on Tuesday night, as the Toronto Maple Leafs visit the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Lightning have a 40-17-5 record for 85 points, five points behind the division-leading Boston Bruins. The Maple Leafs have a 32-23-8 record for 72 points. The Lightning have been the hotter team lately, winning eight of ten, but they enter this game on a two-game skid. Toronto has won just four out of ten and comes in on a one-game losing streak. Can the young but inconsistent Maple Leafs pick up what would be a huge road win in the division? Or will Tampa Bay fix what’s been wrong the last two games and take care of business? We have your sports betting preview of this Eastern Conference clash right here. Let’s see how the NHL odds will be for the Maple Leafs vs Lightning.
Maple Leafs vs Lightning 2020 NHL Game Preview & Betting Odds
- When: Tuesday, February 25, 2020, 7:00 pm ET
- Where: Amalie Arena, Tampa, FL
- TV: TVA / ESPN+
- Radio: CJCL 590 AM Toronto / WFLA 970 AM Tampa Bay
- Live Stream: fuboTV
- NHL Odds: Tampa Bay -185 / O/U 6.5
Why should you bet on Toronto?
The Maple Leafs really are feast or famine this year. They lost in Pittsburgh to the Penguins, 5-2, and then turned around and ran the Penguins out of the rink when they played in Toronto two nights later, 4-0. Two days after that, they hosted the Carolina Hurricanes and were demolished, 6-3, in a game that featured the extremely unusual use of an emergency backup goalie. Zamboni driver David Ayres, who had minor league experience in goal but had a ghastly .777 save percentage in an eight-game AHL stint, allowed two goals to the Leafs but then stoned them for the entire third period.
To be fair, Ayres is also a practice goalie for the Maple Leafs, but the fact that the Hurricanes only got two by him is a testament to their lack of patience against the Carolina defense. Alexander Kerfoot had scored before Ayres came on, and then Pierre Engvall and John Tavares scored on the Leafs’ first two shots after he came into the game, but Toronto could not get the flow of the game going their way consistently in the third. Carolina sent 47 shots on net, so while Frederik Andersen stopped 41 of them, the offense simply could not keep up with the defense’s problems. So which Leafs team will step on the ice in Tampa Bay? A team ready to make a statement after that embarrassing loss? Or the hapless crew that has shown up so often lately?
Why should you put your money on Tampa Bay?
The last week has not been kind to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who had won 11 games in a row before heading to Las Vegas last Thursday. They got taken to the cleaners in a 5-3 loss to the Golden Knights. Then, two nights later, the Arizona Coyotes beat them even worse, with a final score of 7-3. The Lightning had put together a terrific combination of offensive pressure and defensive discipline, but the discipline went out the door in those two setbacks.
In the loss to Arizona, the Coyotes broke out to a 3-1 lead, but then the Lightning came back to tie the game. Arizona shifted to a new gear and reeled off four straight goals. Anthony Cirelli, Ondrej Palat and Brayden Point had the Lightning goals, and Andrei Vasilevskiy had 34 saves, but the Lightning had no answer for the Coyotes’ intensity except for a brief part of the second period. Will returning home help the Lightning regroup?
Maple Leafs vs Lightning Final Score Prediction
I like the youth movement in Toronto, but I think Tampa Bay already had their trap games of the week and will be ready to take apart the Leafs. I predict a final score of Tampa Bay 5, Toronto 2.
