The Tampa Bay Lightning are on the brink of elimination on Thursday night.
After losing back-to-back games in overtime to the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Bolts are down 3-1, in their best-of-7 series with the Buds who would be the first team eliminated from the 2022-23 Stanley Cup Playoffs with a loss.
Bookmakers have installed the Leafs as a -155 favorite in Game 5.
Lightning vs. Maple Leafs prediction
(7 p.m. ET. TBS)
There’s a couple of ways you can look at Thursday’s contest in Toronto.
The Leafs are up 3-1, so all the pressure is on Tampa to keep the series going, but at the same time Toronto hasn’t won a playoff series in 2004 and has blown series leads of 3-1 and 3-2 in the past two springs.
So while the Bolts will feel the heat in a win-or-go-home contest, the Leafs have their own
Another note here is that, while the Lightning lost both games at home, they carried play for the bulk of both contests.
Toronto needed a last-minute goal to send Game 3 to overtime and then mounted a three-goal comeback in Game 4, but the Buds were pretty fortunate to get out of Florida with two wins.
Toronto deserves credit for getting the job done, but it will likely need a sharper effort to put this series to bed in Game 5.
Speaking of being sharper, the Lightning will need a massive effort from goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy if they are to get back into this series.
One of the best goaltenders in the world, Vasilevskiy has not looked himself through the first four games.
There’s plenty of debating how much blame he deserves for the hole Tampa finds itself in, but everyone can agree he’ll need to play lights out for the Bolts to pull off the stunner.
Of course you could also look at from a different angle. Tampa Bay has played its best hockey in months in this series and is still down 3-1.
Perhaps the Lightning’s best just isn’t good enough against this year’s Leafs team.
For me, I tend to lean towards the latter.
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While I still think that Vasilevskiy has another level and always makes Tampa a live underdog, the Leafs have seemingly taken Tampa’s best shot and weathered the storm, while we haven’t seen the best from Toronto just yet.
The Bet: Maple Leafs -155 (BetMGM)