Tampa Bay Lightning and Vegas Golden Knights offer unforeseen value heading into back half of first round series that shouldn’t go ignored
The Stanley Cup Playoffs offer many twists and turns with come-from-behind wins, unforeseen upsets and plenty of opportunities to cash in on some massive values.
We see many already listed on sportsbooks after most series enter their fourth games. It happens often where teams can go down 2-0 or 2-1 early in the series and sportsbooks completely write teams off, which we can look to exploit.
All betting lines are from FanDuel Sportsbook and are subject to change. Hockey is a difficult sport to predict so please gamble responsibly.
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Tampa Bay Lightning – Eastern Conference Champions (+2000)
Winning four of their next five games is a tough challenge for the Bolts, especially with four of those matchups on the road. Still, it’s far from impossible — just last season, the Dallas Stars bounced back after losing the first two games of their series at home, reeling off four straight wins to clinch and move on to the second round.
If anyone could do it, it’s the Bolts as they have the league’s top scorer this season in Nikita Kucherov and are long overdue for a swing in their direction when it comes to this matchup. They’ve dropped six of their last seven playoff matchups versus Florida, dating back to last season and would like to renew their playoff success that saw them reach three straight Stanley Cup Finals just three seasons ago.
The Lightning will likely be without 35-goal scorer Brandon Hagel after he interfered with Panthers captain Aleksander Barkov for a mean body check that potentially hurt the Finnish centre. Tampa will need their star players to produce as you see around the league, other teams like the Wild feature dominating top lines that could change the outlook of a game.
Brayden Point, Jake Guentzel and Kucherov all sitting with one point each so far while forwards Anthony Cirelli and Yanni Gourde still haven’t found the scoresheet. I expect a massive surge of production from this bunch that will need to reclaim some stability in this series with a Game 3 win that will certainly see these odds drop exponentially, so get in while you can. A subtle $10 bet on Tampa would pay out a staggering $200 or 20-to-1 payout.
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Vegas Golden Knights – Western Conference Champions (+650)
The Golden Knights are most certainly not out of their series with the Wild after dropping two straight games and their odds have dropped to a pretty great place. After being listed as the favourites to win the West following Game 1 of their series, they now sit with the fifth-best odds.
This most certainly is a play as the Golden Knights have proven to be a resilient team with the experience of a Stanley Cup win just two seasons ago. They are only one game down in their series and could even things up and plummet these odds back to Vegas being the favourites at odds somewhere around +300 to +400 by Saturday night.
Minnesota shouldn’t be counted out of this series but they are just a wild card team compared to a Vegas team that won the Pacific Division title. We most certainly won’t see odds like this again unless the Golden Knights are put in a position where they are truly in trouble and not worth taking a look at anyway.
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