by Chuck Sommers
Wednesday, May 04, 2022
Stanley Cup Playoffs: Eastern Conference First Round, Game 2 -- Maple Leafs lead 1-0
Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
Time: 7:30 p.m. ET
Venue: Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, ON
Where to watch: ESPN2, Bally Sports Sun, CBC, TVAS, Sportsnet
Opening Odds at USA Sportsbooks
DraftKings: Maple Leafs -135, Lightning +115
BetMGM: Maple Leafs -125, Lightning +105
Caesars: Maple Leafs -130, Lightning +110
Ben Burns has reeled off a strong 24-13-0 run over the last month in the NHL. The last week of the NHL season is here before we get cracking to playoff coverage. The postseason is here, the matchups are set, and you can count on our coverage for all the playoff matchups starting this weekend. Who's going to win the Cup? You need to be tuned in here to find out all the expert analysis. Catch Ben's plays available right now at the Shop Picks page, where you can find all of the Best Bets from our champion sports handicappers.
Lightning - Maple Leafs preview and analysis
Okay, it’s one thing if you expected the Toronto Maple Leafs to win Game 1. That, I can get behind. Home-ice advantage, they were expected to take advantage of such a luxury. I get it, fine, you can have that.
But 5-0? Five to zero? What in the world happened to the Tampa Bay Lightning?
I, for sure, am not going to write the two-time defending champs off after one bad game. Anyone doing that realistically is just a fool. But the reality is the Leafs have a 1-0 lead in this series and are in the driver’s seat to take a 2-0 lead before the series shifts to Tampa with Game 2 on Wednesday in Toronto.
It felt like everything just went the way for Toronto. And where it all started? The Kyle Clifford boarding penalty that gave the Lightning a 5-minute power play. Tampa Bay couldn’t do anything with that, and Toronto’s penalty kill looked like the greatest shorthanded unit ever assembled.
Keeping Tampa off the board there helped. The Maple Leafs went on to get on the board thanks to Jake Muzzin’s long point shot toward the end of the first period. That’s when things went wild. Auston Matthews went on to score twice, and Mitch Marner scored for the first time in a playoff eternity, sealing the deal for a 24-save shutout from Jack Campbell.
"Our team seemed to be unflappable tonight," Toronto coach Sheldon Keefe said after his team went 5-for-5 on the penalty kill. "The kills that we have early, we get an early kill, no problem. The five-minute major, no problem. We just go out, go to the face-off, get our work done. In fact, it turned into a positive, the chances we were able to generate, the life we were able to generate.
"All the way through, our team was extremely focused and went out and executed, so it was a good night for us, but it was one night. Put our head on the pillow tonight and enjoy it and wake up tomorrow and then it's done, it's over. The Tampa Bay Lightning will be a far better team when they come back in here."
It’s one thing if Matthews is scoring at an absurd rate and no one else is behind him doing it. It’s another if Marner and Muzzin are scoring goals and the floodgates open. Throw in two goals from Matthews and it’s just gravy for Toronto.
"I thought it was a really good effort by us," Matthews said. "A lot of really good things that we did tonight, but it's going to be a long series. That's a really good team on the other end."
That being said, there’s absolutely no way the Lightning can fold like this again, right? Like, we’re talking a bad game at all ends. Offense looked out of sorts, Andrei Vasilevskiy was not great, defense got torched every time they got worked into their own zone. Nothing went right, in what might have been a sign of playoff fatigue for the defending champs.
"It's no guarantee because of our history, but we can definitely draw from it and I have the utmost confidence in our group," Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper said.
"I'm not so sure the Maple Leafs had to play particularly well to beat us tonight. You have to win four and you don't want to give teams any freebies, and I think we handed them a freebie tonight."
Prediction
Take Toronto at your own risk. If they win, you’ve done well. If not, you at least braced yourself for what would come. If Tampa goes down 2-0, I can’t imagine what the hockey world will say to this clearly not-overreacting event. Lightning win 3-2
Betting trends
Projected lines
Lightning:
Ondrej Palat -- Steven Stamkos -- Nikita Kucherov
Alex Killorn -- Anthony Cirelli -- Brandon Hagel
Nicholas Paul -- Brayden Point -- Ross Colton
Pat Maroon -- Pierre-Edouard Bellemare -- Corey Perry
Victor Hedman -- Erik Cernak
Ryan McDonagh -- Cal Foote
Mikhail Sergachev -- Zach Bogosian
Andrei Vasilevskiy
Maple Leafs:
Michael Bunting -- Auston Matthews -- Mitchell Marner
Ilya Mikheyev -- John Tavares -- Alexander Kerfoot
William Nylander -- David Kampf -- Pierre Engvall
Nicholas Abruzzese -- Colin Blackwell -- Jason Spezza
Morgan Rielly -- Ilya Lyubushkin
Mark Giordano -- Timothy Liljegren
Jake Muzzin -- TJ Brodie
Jack Campbell
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Chuck Sommers
About the Author:
Chuck Sommers has camped outside of sportsbooks since he can remember, learning the tricks and nuances of the trade. He still has nightmares of betting $5,000 on the Raiders in the Tuck Rule game but has since turned that to 25 years of veteran handicapping greatness. You can find him mostly in the shadows at the Red Rock or Aliante casinos wondering if the over is cashing on any given Sunday.
