Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Rangers
Tampa was in Columbus last night and lost that match 3-2 in a fairly tight-checking game. The big take away from that game was Tampa allowing two goals against on the penalty kill, bringing their running five-game total of short-handed goals allowed to eight. Over those games, they have given up 21 short-handed chances against and that’s far too frequent to find consistent success in the NHL.
The Rangers are coming off a 4-1 win at home against Philadelphia; that win gives them a three-game winning streak and a record of 6-1-1 in their last eight games. More importantly, their last two wins came at home and marks the first time in two months that they’ve won back to back games at home in regulation time.
Part of the Rangers’ surge of late has been because their power play has been running at a 32.1-percent efficiency over those last six games, contributing nine goals of the 27 total they’ve scored. Given that the last time these two teams met – December 29th – resulted in not only a Rangers win but three power play goals, I would expect the Rangers to get at least one with the man advantage tonight. Whenever you can go into a game expecting one team to be up at least 1-0 before the game starts, it’s a big advantage.
The Lightning have enough scorers to make me nervous about starting whoever is in net for the Rangers, but there are enough good value players on both sides to pick from.
|
Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
|
B.J. Crombeen $5000 |
Chris Kreider $9300 |
(NYR) $8200 |
Michael Del Zotto $7100 |
Nate Thompson $5000 |
