The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Toronto Maple Leafs meet in game two of their Eastern Conference first round series in NHL action from Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday night.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will try to even up their series with Toronto after the Lightning fell short with a 5-0 Toronto win in the series opener on Monday.
Jake Muzzin opened the scoring for Toronto with the lone goal of the opening frame with less than two minutes to go in the first before Auston Matthews doubled Toronto’s lead just over six minutes into the second period. David Kampf made it 3-0 with a short-handed goal just before the midway point of the middle frame. Mitch Marner got his long-time playoff scoring monkey off of his back with a 4th Toronto goal with just over three minutes to go in the 2nd and Matthews doubled his playoff tally with a second marker and the lone goal of the third period just over eight minutes into the third. Tampa Bay would try to get onto the board, but it was all for naught as the Leafs rode the five-goal cushion to the finish line.
Jack Campbell got the win and shutout for Toronto, stopping all 24 shots in the victory while Andrei Vasilevskiy ended up with the loss for the Lightning after allowing all 5 goals on 31 shots faced in the losing effort.
I get the reasoning for backing the Lightning here as they’re the two-time defending champions and have to be a bit embarrassed after being dismantled in the opener. However, I think Toronto’s also full of confidence right now and at some point you had to figure the losing thing was going to get old for the young Leafs. Toronto’s focused on the task at hand and I said before the Lightning haven’t looked right for some time now. I think Toronto takes a 2-0 series lead into Tampa Bay and gets the win here at a reasonable price.