Tampa Bay Lightning at Edmonton Oilers
Tampa Bay is coming off a 2-0 shutout win in Calgary, making it two wins to start their four-game Western Conference road trip, after beating Vancouver on New Year’s Day. The Lightning allowed an average of 24.5 shots against/game in the first two contests, which explains the two goals against in two games. They were about even in shot attempts with Vancouver and blew Calgary out of the way, if that’s any indication of how they’re playing.
Edmonton, meanwhile, is reeling harder than a tourist going deep sea fishing. It’s not just that they’ve lost four games in a row, including their last two games by a combined score of 10-3, it’s how it happened: Edmonton, over those four games, was outshot by an average of 39-21. Their high was 25 shots for and their low for shots against is 36. It’s been bad.
These two teams met in Tampa back in early November, a 4-2 win for the Bolts. Of course, that occurred pre-Steven Stamkos injury so things are a bit different now. Stamkos had two of the four goals for Tampa Bay that game so this could actually be a bit of a tighter contest.
The Oilers, if they are going to be successful, need to turn their power play around. Their PP has gone three straight games without a goal and they are operating at just a 10.5-percent efficiency over their last 12 games. I do see this being a closer game than the Oilers have played recently, so I will take some skaters and leave the goalies alone.
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Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
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(TBL) $12,400 |
Ondrej Palat $7200 |
(TBL) $6850 |
Jeff Petry $7000 |
(TBL) $5000 |
