The Tampa Bay Lightning and the Buffalo Sabres meet in NHL action from the KeyBank Arena on Tuesday night.
The Tampa Bay Lightning will look to rebound from a 5-2 loss at the hands of the Boston Bruins in their last game. Steven Stamkos leads the Lightning in scoring with 41 points including a team-high 16 goals along with 25 assists while Victor Hedman also has 36 points with a team-high 29 assists as well this season. Alex Killorn has 31 points with 11 goals and 20 assists while the aforementioned Hedman has a team-high +10 plus/minus rating as well for the Bolts this season. Andrei Vaslievskiy has seen the bulk of the workload between the pipes for Tampa Bay this season, posting a record of 19-6-3 with a 2.23 GAA and a .923 save percentage on the year.
The Buffalo Sabres will try to snap a five-game losing streak after a 3-2 loss to San Jose in their last matchup. Tage Thompson leads Buffalo with 23 points with a team-high 12 goals and Rasmus Dahlin has 22 points and Kyle Okposo has 21 points with Dahlin logging 6 goals and 16 assists while Okposo has 7 goals and 14 assists. Jeff Skinner has 19 points of his own split between 11 goals and 8 assists while Victor Olofsson has 20 points split between 5 goals and 15 helpers.. Dustin Tokarski’s gone 4-5-3 with a 3.28 GAA and a .903 save percentage in goal for Buffalo while Ukko-Pekka Luokkonen is 2-4-2 with a 2.61 GAA and a .922 save percentage and Aaron Dell is 0-5 with a 4.52 GAA and an .872 save percentage.
Tampa Bay is 119-58 in their last 177 games overall and 40-18 in their last 58 games as a favorite while the over is 9-4 in their last 13 road games. Buffalo is 19-55 in their last 74 games overall and 1-10 in their last 11 home games while the under is 7-2-1 in their last 10 games overall.
I get the allure of heavy plus money with a home dog, but the issue here is that the Sabres have had issues winning anywhere as of late and I just don’t see the value with them in spots like these. Tampa Bay has been rock solid more often than not as of late, and I just don’t want to be on the other side of the Bolts, especially with the Sabres on the other side. Give me the Lightning -1.5 here.