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Toronto Maple Leafs vs Montreal Canadiens NHL Picks, Odds, Predictions 5/20/21

Montreal Canadiens (24-21-11) at Toronto Maple Leafs (35-14-7)
May 20, 2021 7:30 pm EDT
The Line: Toronto Maple Leafs -222 / Montreal Canadiens +176 --- Over/Under: 5.5
(Get latest betting odds)

The Montreal Canadiens and the Toronto Maple Leafs meet in game one of their First round playoff matchup in NHL action from Scotiabank Arena on Thursday.

The Montreal Canadiens come in with a record of 24-21-11 on the year after going 11-10-7 away from the Bell Centre in the regular season. Tyler Toffoli leads the Canadiens in scoring with 44 points including a team-high 28 goals and 16 assists while Jeff Petry has 42 points with 30 assists and Nick Suzuki is one point behind with 41 points including 15 goals and 26 assists this season. Tomas Tatar has 30 points split between 10 goals and 20 assists as well for Montreal on the year. As a team, Montreal is averaging 2.8 goals on 31.2 shots with a 19.3% success rate on the power play while allowing 2.9 goals on 28.3 shots with a 79.3% success rate on the PK this year.

The Toronto Maple Leafs come into the postseason after finishing the year with a record of 35-14-7, claiming their first division title since 2000 with a record of 18-7-3 at home this season. Mitch Marner leads the Leafs in scoring with 67 points including 20 goals and a team-high 47 assists while Auston Matthews had a league-high 41 goals with 25 assists for his 66 points and John Tavares added 50 points with 19 goals and 31 assists. William Nylander’s on 42 points with 17 goals and 25 assists and Morgan Rielly also has 35 points with 30 assists this season. As a team, Toronto is averaging 3.3 goals on 31.3 shots with a 20% success rate on the power play while allowing 2.6 goals on 27.8 shots with a 78.5% kill rate on the PK this season.

Montreal is 1-5 in their last 6 road games and 0-5 in their last 5 games overall while the under is 17-5-4 in their last 26 playoff games as an underdog. Toronto is 4-0 in their last 4 home games and 2-5 in their last 7 playoff games as a favorite while the over is 8-3 in their last 11 Thursday games. The favorite is 23-8 in the last 31 meetings between these two teams.

I was originally leaning towards Montreal +1.5 in this game, but realistically I have to switch course. I’m getting the sense more and more that Toronto wants to erase this narrative of first round chokers and while Montreal is getting some players back and they won’t make life easy on Toronto, I think the LEafs come out flying here as this is what they were looking forward to. Give me Toronto on the puck line here.

Chris Ruffolo's Free Pick: Toronto -1.5

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Chris Ruffolo

Chris joined the Sports Chat Place team in August 2016 and has a proven system that combines multiple analytical and situational statistics and trends to give out thousands of winning picks over the last three years with winning records across all of the top leagues, Follow Chris Ruffolo on Twitter @ruffthepickdawg

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