The Tampa Bay Lightning visit the Toronto Maple Leafs for Game 1 of their opening round. The two teams split the regular-season series, earning two wins each. This is where you’ll find everything, including team win odds, the over/under, and point spreads.
Tampa Bay Lightning (+100) vs Toronto Maple Leafs (-120)
TOR: 55-21-7, 3.80 GF/GP, 3.07 GA/GP, L10: 7-2-1
TBL: 51-23-8, 3.48 GF/GP, 2.78 GA/GP, L10: 7-3-0
The Maple Leafs enter the Stanley Cup Playoffs as the slight favourites over the back-to-back defending champion Lightning. In four meetings during the regular season, both teams took home two wins and featured a combined total of 28 goals. Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy started all four games against the Leafs, allowing 12 goals against. He finished the year tied for first in wins, posting a .916 save percentage with two shutouts.
Jack Campbell started three of four for the Leafs against the Lightning this season, winning two while allowing eight goals against. His season was limited to 49 games due to some minor injuries, but he managed to finish with 31 wins, five shutouts, and similar numbers to Vasilevskiy. He registered a .934 SV% in last year’s playoffs and will look to rebound from a first-round heartbreak to the Montreal Canadiens.
Point Spread
Toronto – Win By More Than 1 Goal (-1.5, +195)
In three of four meetings, the winner was determined by two-or-more goals. While Tampa Bay obliterated the Leafs in the final game of the season by a score of 8-1, they were also without Campbell and Auston Matthews. Taking a look at the last time the Leafs rebounded from a loss to Tampa Bay, they put away the defending champions by a score of 6-2, with Matthews recording a hat trick.
Toronto has a chip on their shoulder entering the postseason, despite the fact that they’re slight favourites with home-ice advantage. They desperately want to put to rest any doubt of the inability to win a playoff round, and what better way than to do it against the Lightning. Knowing their style, Toronto will come out of the gate with a head full of steam and attempt to run up the score before leaning on Campbell to keep them in the game.
Total Points
Total Goals Scored – Over 6.5 (+100)
Despite this opening round boasting two of the better goaltenders in the Eastern Conference, make no doubt about it that this is a goal-scoring matchup. Matthews, Mitch Marner, William Nylander, and John Tavares take on Steven Stamkos, Nikita Kucherov, Brayden Point, and Victor Hedman. Both teams have tons of firepower and each game should have tons of pucks crossing the goal line. Game 1 will be a measuring stick for both clubs, so expect the over to be met.
The final three games of the regular season had a combined total of 25 goals, with the final game seeing nine goals between the two teams. In each of those losses, the goaltender took a hit to their SV% as the number of goals dropped them well below .900. In their last five playoff appearances, Toronto has lost four of five opening games, while Tampa Bay has won three of their last five.
Odds via Yahoo and BetMGM.
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