Florida Panthers at Tampa Bay Lightning
Florida is just 2-5-0 since the Olympic break with their two wins coming against the Islanders and the Sabres. In other words, this is a pretty bad team right now. If there’s a bright side to this team lately, it’s that their power play is 17.6-percent in their last three games. While that number wouldn’t even be a top-15 mark for the season, it is about double the rate that it was before those three games. So they are finding the net with a bit of regularity on the power play. Everything else though, from puck possession to penalty killing, is pretty poor.
Tampa Bay is 1-4-2 since the Olympics and has lost four straight games. Those four straight losses include games to Buffalo and Phoenix with Steven Stamkos back in the lineup. This team just has not looked the same lately, especially since the Martin St. Louis trade: the power play is just 10.5-percent in their last seven games while the penalty kill is just 81-percent; the team has been getting their faced kicked in on the shot clock against teams not named Buffalo or Phoenix; Ben Bishop is having his worst month of the season with a .903 save percentage.
I would lean Tampa Bay in this game just because Florida is so bad but this is not a ringing endorsement of the Lightning. The Panthers have lost all three games to Tampa this year by a total of 16-6 so I’ll take the Lightning, but I won’t be stacking them. I suppose Ben Bishop would make a good play in net tonight but for some reason I just feel nervous about it (no evidence other than what was presented to back up this statement).
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Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
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(TBL) |
Alex Killorn $6997 |
Tyler Johnson |
(FLA) $5442 |
Tomas Fleischmann $4656 |
