Tampa Bay Lightning at Boston Bruins - 8/5/20 NHL Picks and Prediction
Photo by Bob DeChiara-USA TODAY Sports
Tampa Bay Lightning (44-21-6) at Boston Bruins (44-15-12)
NHL Hockey: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 at 4:00 pm (Scotiabank Arena)
The Line: Boston Bruins -115 / Tampa Bay Lightning -105 --- Over/Under: 5.5 Click Here for the Latest Odds
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The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins meet in a seeding round robin game from Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday afternoon.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will look to build on their round robin opening victory over the Washington Capitals in their last game by a final score of 3-2 in a shootout. Nikita Kucherov opened the scoring for the Bolts with just over seven minutes to go in the opening period and Mitchell Stephens doubled Tampa Bay’s lead just under eight minutes into the second period. Washington would pull a goal back with 2:36 to go in the second and would tie the game at two just 2:08 later. The third period solved nothing and neither did overtime, so it was off to the shootout where Tampa Bay scored on two of their three attempts while Washington buried just one, leaving the Lightning to pick up the points and the win. Andrei Vasilevskiy got the win after stopping 31 of 33 shots faced in the winning effort.
The Boston Bruins will be out to bounce back after a 4-1 loss to the Philadelphia Flyers in their opening round robin matchup. The first period saw no scoring but Philadelphia would take the lead 5:33 into the second period before doubling their lead just under four minutes later. Chris Wagner would get Boston on the board with just over a minute to go in the second period, but the Flyers would restore the lead off of the ensuing faceoff just :08 later. The Flyers would put the game out of reach with a 4th goal 4:07 into the 3rd period. Boston would try but they wouldn’t get any closer as Philadelphia held on for the win and the points that go with it. Jaroslav Halak took the loss, falling to 0-1 after allowing 4 goals on 29 shots faced in the losing effort.
Tampa Bay is 45-11 in their last 56 division games and 16-5 in their last 21 games against a team with a winning record while the under is 5-1 in their last 6 games as an underdog. Boston is 20-8 in their last 28 games overall and 4-1 in their last 5 games within the division while the under is 4-0 in their last 4 playoff games as a favorite. Tampa Bay is 10-2 in the last 12 meetings between these two teams.
I get why Boston would be favored as they need a win to avoid finishing near the bottom of the round robin grouping. However, we don’t know who’s going to start in goal, whether it be Halak (who didn’t look all that good in the first game) or Tuukka Rask who was deemed unfit to play before game one, but even so, Tampa took three of four against Boston this season and while the Lightning wanted to avoid the top seed to not have a repetition of last season, the Bolts just looked better after game one. I could easily see the Lightning winning this one and getting them at an underdog price sounds like a good play to me. Give me Tampa Bay here.
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Chris’s Pick Tampa Bay -105
AUTHOR: Chris Ruffolo
Mitch's Take...
