Tampa Bay Lightning vs. New York Islanders – 9/15/20 NHL Pick, Odds, and Prediction
New York Islanders at Tampa Bay Lightning 9/15/20: NHL Hockey free preview, analysis, prediction, odds and pick against the spread.
2020-09-15 20:00:00 EDT
The New York Islanders and the Tampa Bay Lightning meet in game five of their best-of-seven Eastern Conference final series in NHL action from Rogers Place on Tuesday night.
The New York Islanders will try to fight for another day after falling behind in the series 3-1 after Tampa Bay pulled out a 4-1 win over the Islanders in game four last time out to take a 3-1 series lead.
The game was scoreless through the opening 20 minutes and for the first half of the 2nd period before Brock Nelson gave the Islanders the lead at the 11:27 mark of the second period. Blake Coleman responded for Tampa Bay just :15 later and Ondrej Palat pushed Tampa Bay in front :12 after that to carry the 2-1 lead into the 3rd period. Brayden Point pushed Tampa Bay’s lead to 3-1 less than four minutes into the 3rd period and despite New York’s best efforts to get shots put towards the net, it simply didn’t happen for them as Patrick Maroon iced Tampa Bay’s win with an empty-netter with over two minutes to go in the 3rd, leaving the Islanders on the brink of elimination at the final buzzer.
Andrei Vasilevskiy got the win in goal for Tampa Bay after stopping 26 of 27 shots faced in the winning effort while Semyon Varlamov took the loss between the pipes for the Islanders after giving up three goals on 35 shots faced in the defeat.
New York is 2-5 in their last 7 games overall and 1-4 in their alst 5 games as an underdog while the over is 15-4-2 in their last 21 Tuesday games. Tampa Bay is 39-14 in their last 53 games overall and 68-33 in their last 101 games following a win while the under is 12-4-4 in their last 20 games against the Metropolitan division. New York is 1-4 in the last 5 meetings between these two teams.
The number has seemed pretty close to dead on for a few of these conference final games, but for game five, normally I’d expect a tight game, but I’m expecting back and forth action throughout here and for both teams to trade blows. I’ll side with the over as my free pick for this game but my stronger play is on the side and I have that available as a premium pick that you can find here.
