Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Islanders - 9/17/20 NHL Picks and Prediction

The Tampa Bay Lightning will advance to their first Stanley Cup Final for the first time since the 2014-15 season with a victory here. The Tampa Bay Lightning are averaging 3.17 goals per game and are scoring on 19.6 percent of their power play opportunities. Brayden Point leads Tampa Bay with nine goals, Nikita Kucherov has 19 assists and Ondrej Palat has 59 shots on goal. Defensively, the Tampa Bay Lightning are allowing 2.28 goals per game and are killing 83.1 percent of their opponents power plays. Andrei Vasilevskiy has given up 39 goals on 556 shots faced.

The Lightning are 48-17 in their last 65 Thursday games, 74-30 in their last 104 games playing on 1 days rest and 39-15 in their last 54 overall. The Islanders are 6-15 in their last 21 games as an underdog, 1-4 in their last 5 games following a win and 1-4 in their last 5 Thursday games. The under is 11-5-3 in Lightning last 19 overall. The over is 3-0-2 in Islanders last 5 games following a win. The Lightning are 7-3 in the last 10 meetings in New York and 15-6 in the last 21 meetings. The favorite is 19-9 in the last 28 meetings.

Right when it looked like the Tampa Bay Lightning were running away with this series and going to the Stanley Cup Finals, the Islanders put together their best defensive performance of the series and win in double overtime. I mentioned in a previous write up that the Islanders had yet to play their best defensive game that got them this far in the playoffs and it looked to be too late down 3-1 in the series. While the Lightning are still the better team, the Islanders got a serious momentum boost with a double overtime win and are capable of getting another one if that same defense shows up in game six.

I'll take my chances with the Islanders and the plus money based on what we saw last game.