Toronto Maple Leafs vs. Arizona Coyotes Prediction, NHL Odds
The Leafs opened as -190 favourites on the NHL odds.
Maple Leafs vs. Coyotes NHL Betting Odds
A reminder that Arizona plays in the smallest building in the NHL, the 5,000-seat Mullett Arena located on the campus of Arizona State University. The team doesn’t have a long-term place to call home with many believing it will relocate eventually. Essentially, if the latest bid to get an arena built fails for whatever reason, the club is surely a goner.
Thus far, Commissioner Gary Bettman has stood firm in his resolve to keep the Coyotes in this market, but it simply may not be suited to host an NHL team. Salt Lake City is often mentioned as the team’s next city. Wednesday is a homecoming for Leafs star Auston Matthews as he while was born in California, his family moved to the Phoenix area when we was very young, and he got interested in hockey thanks to attending Coyotes games. Matthews has five goals and one assist in 12 career games against Arizona.
It’s the first of two regular-season meetings between the Maple Leafs and Coyotes with Arizona visiting Scotiabank Arena on Leap Day (Feb. 29). The Yotes won both last season by multiple goals. They are 7-3 in the past 10 meetings overall. The over-under is 3-6-1.
Toronto Maple Leafs
We projected Toronto to lose in St. Louis on Monday 4-3 as we weren’t sure if John Tavares was going to play. He did play (scoreless in 16:08), and the Leafs won their fourth straight, 4-2. Auston Matthews was unable to tally a third straight hat trick but did have his 49th goal of the season and it came on the power play — he has scored 14 goals and nine assists on the power play this season. Matthews, who also had an assist, became the first Maple Leafs player with seven goals over a span of three games played since Rick Vaive from Feb. 28-March 5, 1987. The most in franchise history is nine by Babe Dye from Feb. 2-9, 1921. Toronto also had a short-handed goal from William Nylander and an empty-netter from Bobby McMann. The lone 5-on-5 goal was from Matthew Knies. Nylander’s third shorthanded goal of the season stood as the game winner. Only four players have more shorthanded goals in the NHL. Mitchell Marner had three helpers. Ilya Samsonov stopped 19 of 21 shots to win a fourth straight outing. Wednesday will be the final game of defenceman Morgan Rielly’s five-game suspension. Fellow blueliner Williams Lagesson was out Monday and is day-to-day. We say this might be a trap game as the Leafs could be looking past Arizona toward a game Thursday night at defending Cup champion Vegas.
Arizona Coyotes
Arizona is on the longest losing streak in the NHL at 10 in a row following a 6-3 home defeat vs. Edmonton on Monday – the Yotes have not scored more than three goals once during the skid. They led the Oilers 3-2 entering the third before collapsing. Nick Bjugstad had two goals (12 on the season) and Clayton Keller (22nd) the other for Arizona. Keller also has an assist and is up to a team-best 51 points. He has tied Keith Tkachuk and Radim Vrbata (both with four) for the third most 50-point seasons in Coyotes team history. Shane Doan holds the record with 11 and with nine straight 50-point seasons. However, Keller is also minus-19 this year. Bjugstad hadn’t scored a goal in nine games. Matt Villalta made his NHL debut in net vs. the Oilers, but it should be back to Karel Vejmelka here with co-starter Connor Ingram injured. Vejmelka is 6-14-2 with a 3.51 GAA and .896 SV.
