NHL Best Bet: Tuesday, June 14th

The right to have your name etched on one damn big piece of hardware comes down to the final two teams and our resident U.S sports guru Ej Garr has a fantastic offer for Game 1. The Tampa Bay Lightning will be in search of their 3rd consecutive Stanley Cup win but the high-flying Avalanche hopes that home-ice advantage comes in handy if the series goes to a 7th game.

NHL Playoffs Best Bet June 14th

• Colorado vs. Tampa Bay: Lightning to Win (OT Incl)

Odds as of 09:00 am June 14th, 2022. Odds may now differ.

Colorado vs Tampa Bay Best Bet

June 15, 01:00 UK time

Isn’t it ironic? Don’t ya think? So, the Tampa Bay Lightning are now the team that has been playing every other night while the Avalanche have been practising since their game 4 wins over the Oilers on June 6. 

The Lightning was facing a similar situation before they faced the New York Rangers in the Eastern Conference finals. As a result of their 4-game sweep over the Florida Panthers, Tampa Bay had to deal with an extended time off between Game 1 of the ECF and the Rangers quickly were up 2 games to love before Tamps got their legs under them.

As I spoke of at the time it happened, Messier and Chelios came on the air during the second intermission of Game 1 speaking about what lengthy time off the ice does to your stamina. This time around the Avalanche is the team having to endure a long layoff so how will it affect them?

With all of the post-season experience that the Lightning has played, they were still unable to stop the quick, young Rangers out of the gate before reeling off 4 straight wins to land in the finals. How good is the Tampa 1st line?

Nikita Kuckerov 3G 5A

Ondrej Palat 4G 4A

Steven Stamkos 5G 2A

Well, ask the Rangers how good they were because there are your point totals from the three maniacs who combined to score 12 goals with 11 dimes and that is just the ECF. You can ask plenty of teams who have seen those three in the playoffs because they make up 3 of the top-4 all-time Lightning post-season points leaders.

Kucherov has scored 51 goals and needs 1 assist to go over the century mark in playoff helpers having played 130 games in the second season. Palat has scored 45 goals and dished out 44 assists having played 132 post-season games to hold the Ning team record.

Stamkos has poured in 87 post-season points in his career (41G / 47A) and Victor Hedman leads all defensemen with 21G and 81A to topple the 100-point mark. 

They’re all still accumulating to those numbers and they’ll have at least 4 more outings to build on their resumes.

Nate MacKinnon is not going to catch Joe Sakic or Peter Forsberg atop the Avalanche post-season leaderboards but #29 has still managed to put up 87 points scoring 39 goals with 48 assists. I think we all enjoy watching MacKinnon skate because he can take a puck on his own end of the ice and break down anyone in his way to score a goal. We have seen him basically just take a loose puck behind the red line and just charge toward the frame and bury a wicked wrister.

Mikko Rantanen has been here with MacKinnon through most of their careers as he has played only 7 fewer post-season games than MacKinnon (64 / 57) but he is 5th all-time on the Avalanche leaderboard in points. Rantanen got hurt near the end of the regular season but he still led the team in the regular season with 92 points scoring 36 goals with 56 assists.

Cale Makar is leading all Avs in post-season points with 22 and that is quite a bit of production from someone on your back line. Gabe Landeskog is tied with Rantanen accumulating 17 post-season points and if anyone should be making your board for player props I believe he is your guy to look toward from the Avs side of the puck.

However, I see a big game 1 upset win for the Lightning on the road because of the same reason that they lost game 1 to the Rangers. Colorado will have to get their legs back under them and I hope it takes them a game to do it. 

• Selection: Lightning ML
• Best odds:2.40 (William Hill)
• Stakes 4/10

Odds as of 9:00 am June 14th, 2022. Odds may now differ.

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