Habs and Lightning Ready For Game 2 Tonight

The good news for the Canadiens is that the Lightning are just 1-10 in their 11 home playoff games since the 2022 Stanley Cup Finals. It will be a challenge for the Habs to hand the Lightning yet another playoff loss at home, but if they play as they did in Game 1, they have a decent chance of making it happen once again. In reality, the Lightning had more shots, but the Canadiens were the team that had more high-danger chances, especially on the power play, where Juraj Slafkovsky scored three goals.

Going into tonight, the Lightning announced that defenseman Charle-Edouard D’Astous will be out with an upper-body injury after getting sandwiched between Jake Evans and Josh Anderson during the 2nd period of Game 1. He will be replaced by Declan Carlile in Game 2. The Lightning will also dress forward Scott Sabourin in place of Conor Geekie to add toughness to their lineup. Both lineup changes are essentially thanks to Habs forward Josh Anderson, who delivered big hits all game in Game 1, which is how D’Astous got hurt. This in turn leads to the Lightning bringing in Sabourin to counter what Anderson will likely do for the Habs tonight. We should fully expect at least one fight in tonight’s game, as both Anderson and Sabourin will likely cause trouble. The only difference is that Anderson may also chip in offensively during the game as well as be physical like he did in Game 1.

Lightning head coach Jon Cooper also mentioned that although captain Victor Hedman has been on the ice for morning skates, he is expected to return during the series against the Canadiens. With that being said, it will make the Habs’ jobs easier during the series as they won’t need to worry about facing the former Norris Trophy winner.

As for the Canadiens, it doesn’t seem like they will change their winning lineup heading into tonight’s game. However, if anything changes, it will be made as a game-time decision.

Tonight should be a goaltending duel between Jakub Dobes and Andrei Vasilevskiy, who both are looking to improve on their Game 1 play. At even strength, both goaltenders were solid, allowing just a single goal each, but it ended up being a game decided by special teams. Dobes would allow 2 power play goals, whereas Vasilevskiy would get beaten 3 times by Juraj Slafkovsky on the power play. That ended up being the difference despite the two goaltenders being among the top netminders in all of hockey over the past month. Overall it wasn’t a terrible game for either of them, but both goaltenders would have likely wanted the score to be lower. With that being said, we should expect the goaltending to be more solid in Game 2. Although if it hadn’t been for the penalties in Game 1, it may have been a different game for both of them.

As a result, betting the under 5.5 goals seems a solid pick tonight as there should be fewer minor penalties called. Although taking the over 5.5 goals is a good bet if you see tonight having just as many minor penalties. Despite winning Game 1 and the previous 2 meetings against the Lightning, the Habs are listed as +150 road underdogs for Game 2. However, they still have the vibes of underdogs in this series despite the early 1-0 lead.

In terms of player props, betting on Slafkovsky to score tonight seems like a smart wager after coming off a hat-trick on Sunday. The Habs forward has 7 goals and 10 points in his last 4 games against Vasilevskiy. His line to score tonight is set to +175, while recording 2+ points is listed at +275. Combine Slafkovsky scoring a goal with under 5.5 goals and a Habs win to boost your odds to +1000 with a 3-leg Same Game Parlay.

What are your predictions for tonight’s matchup?