Boston Bruins vs. Tampa Bay Lightning – 8/26/20 NHL Pick, Odds, and Prediction

The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Boston Bruins meet in game three of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference semi-final in NHL action from Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday.

The Tampa Bay Lightning will try to surge ahead 2-1 in the series after evening up the set at one win apiece following a 4-3 overtime win over Boston in game two last time out.

Nick Ritchie opened the scoring for Boston just over three minutes into the game before Blake Coleman tied the game at one for Tampa Bay with just over seven minutes to go in the opening frame. Brad Marchand restored Boston’s lead with 5:27 to go in the middle period, but Nikita Kucherov would tie the game at two just :55 later. Coleman gave Tampa Bay the lead just after the midway point of the third with his second goal of the game but Brad Marchand would respond and tie the game at three for Boston with his second goal of the game with less than four minutes to play. The game went to overtime and in the free period, Ondrej Palat buried the game winner for the Lightning 4:40 into the extra frame.

Andrei Vasilevskiy got the win in goal for Tampa Bay after stopping 22 of 25 shots faced in the win while Jaroslav Halak took the loss in goal for Boston after allowing 4 goals on 40 shots faced in the losing effort.

Head-to-head, the Lightning are 12-3 in the last 15 meetings between these two teams while the under is 4-1 in the last 5 meetings as well.

I’m having a hard time with this one as it genuinely could go either way. With that said, on a back-to-back, I trust Andrei Vasilevskiy to have a better game than I do Jaroslav Halak, but the issue I’m having is that these two teams are pretty evenly matched and the Bruins could steal the game like they did in game one. This one should be a tight-checking affair regardless, so give me the under in this one as I could easily see this finishing 2-1, but my stronger play is on the side and I have that available as a premium play that you can find here.