Tampa Bay Lightning vs. Toronto Maple Leafs Game 1 Prediction, NHL Odds
The Toronto Maple Leafs lost in the first round of the 2022 Stanley Cup playoffs to the Tampa Bay Lightning and eye payback starting Tuesday night from Scotiabank Arena as the teams meet in Game 1 of their 2023 Eastern Conference first-round set.
The Leafs opened as -150 favourites on the NHL odds.
Lightning vs. Maple Leafs Stanley Cup Playoffs Betting Odds
Last year, Toronto also had home-ice advantage in the first round of the playoffs against Tampa Bay, then the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion. The Leafs were up 3-2 in the series and up the same score in Game 6 in Tampa about midway through the third period but couldn’t hold on and lost 4-3 on Brayden Point’s goal at 18:04 of overtime. The Bolts then went to Toronto and won 2-1 in Game 7 on their way back to the Cup Finals – this time losing to Colorado.
Toronto, which hasn’t advanced past the first round since 2004 and has the longest Stanley Cup drought in the league, is a -156 favourite on the series line with the Lightning +138. The favoured exact result is Leafs in seven at +427, and that’s where I lean. The over-under total games is 5.5, and the over is a -172 favourite. The over is easy money. That it finishes in six games and seven games are both +210 favourites. The favoured game and series double for Game 1 is Leafs/Leafs at +124. Like that too.
The Maple Leafs won the regular-season series 2-1 with the winning team scoring four goals in each.
Tampa Bay Lightning
Is this finally the postseason where all those playoff games the past few years played by this franchise and its key players finally catch up to the Lightning? They essentially have played another full regular season since their run of three straight trips to the Stanley Cup Finals began in 2019-20.
Goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy is a first-ballot future Hall of Famer but his play definitely slipped a bit this season at 34-22-4 with a 2.65 GAA and .915 SV. He was a bit worse on the road at 14-14-0 with a 2.75 GAA and .913 SV. Nikita Kucherov led the Bolts with 113 points, the second-most of his career. Brayden Point led with a career-high 51 goals. Kucherov and Point have been arguably the NHL’s two best forwards in the past three postseason combined. Kucherov has 93 points (23G, 70A) in that span, easily the most points in the league. Markham native Steven Stamkos finished with 34 points and 50 assists this season but was minus-5.
Toronto Maple Leafs
The Leafs were resting guys down the stretch but still ended up winning four straight games, including 4-1 in Tampa on April 11 when Joseph Woll was in net. If he’s in a game in these playoffs, something went badly wrong for Toronto.
Ilya Samsonov will get the call, and he was almost unbeatable at Scotiabank Arena at 19-3-3 with a 1.98 GAA and .927 SV. Toronto didn’t have a 100-point scorer this year as Mitchell Marner finished one shy with a career-best 99 – he also missed two games. William Nylander (82 games) and Auston Matthews (74) led with 40 goals each. Matthews is the +334 favourite to be the top goalscorer in this series, while Nylander is +588. Blueliner Erik Gustafsson, a trade acquisition from Washington, missed the final three games of the regular season with an upper-body injury, but the team may have been playing it extra cautious.
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