NHL Hockey Betting: Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Rangers

Entering Monday night action there are six teams in the NHL tied for the best record in the league. The Tampa Bay Lightning, Nashville Predators, Montreal Canadiens, New York Islanders, St. Louis Blues and Pittsburgh Penguins all have 34 points and to make things even more interesting there are three teams (Detroit, Vancouver, Anaheim) with 33 points. The Lightning are one of these three teams in action tonight as they head to New York’s Madison Square Garden to take on the Rangers. The Rangers are still ‘treading water’ this season by just about every metric. They’ve won two straight (both against Philadelphia) and are 5-3-2 in their last 10 games.

The Rangers are definitely not the worst team in the NHL or nowhere near it for that matter. What they very well may be is the most overrated and overpriced team in the NHL. That appears to be the case again tonight where the Broadway Blueshirts are short favorites against the high flying Bolts. Tampa Bay has been a solid road team (6-4-1) while the Rangers have been adequate at home (8-4-3) though not good enough at MSG to compensate for a horrible 3-4-1 away mark. The Rangers have won 4 of their last 5 games but that’s not as impressive as it sounds. Credit where it’s due for a solid win over Montreal but the three other wins in this stretch came against flatlining Philadelphia with two of the wins over the Flyers coming at home. Philly has one of the worst road records in the NHL at 2-8-1. The loss during that stretch came at Tampa Bay–the Rangers played well but you’re not going to have a lot of success trying to beat the Bolts in an end to end offensive shootout.

Tampa Bay has won four of the last five games head to head including two straight in New York City. The Rangers’ big problem this year is listless play on the defensive end and mediocre form by Henrick Lundqvist. The Rangers are middle of the pack in team goals against and given their style that’s not going to get them a lot of wins. They need to bring the defensive intensity to beat the high scoring Lightning (#1 in the NHL averaging 3.5 goals per game) but until we see evidence of that we’ll go against the Rangers.

BET TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING +100 OVER NEW YORK RANGERS

NHL Hockey Betting: Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Rangers