NHL Hockey Betting: Tampa Bay Lightning at New York Islanders

Three games on the NHL playoff schedule for Tuesday and we’ll look at the only Eastern Conference game on the board as the Tampa Bay Lightning head North to take on the New York Islanders at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. This looked to be an evenly matched series going in and that’s the way it’s played out so far with the Bolts and Isles tied at one game apiece.

The Islanders looked to catch the Lightning by surprise in Game One but the Islanders took care of business with a 4-1 win in the second game. The Islanders look to be well poised to bounce back here–they’re 16-6 +9.8 units after a loss by two or more goals in their previous game and 16-6 +9.3 units after scoring one goal or less in their previous game. One area in which the teams have a huge disparity is in their performance against opponents with winning records. The Lightning are 15-22 -12 units on the season against teams over .500 while the Islanders are 24-16 +9.8 units against opponents with winning records. That suggests that the Islanders are something of an ‘undervalued’ quantity while the Lightning might be priced higher than they should be given their performance.

Tampa Bay also has negative numbers after a win by 2+ goals (13-13 -4.8 units) and after scoring 4+ goals in their previous game (13-17 -7.6 units). After playing three straight home games they’re 6-9 -6.4 units. As noted in the previous paragraph this doesn’t automatically mean that the Lightning won’t perform well in this situation but does suggest that they’re overvalued in terms of line value. The Islanders dropped into the wildcard slot in the East but that had more to do with the furious closing pace of the Pittsburgh Penguins than anything else. They finished with 100 points and were 6-3-1 in their last 10 regular season games.

They were also very good at home (25-11-5) and mediocre on the road (20-16-5) which is why getting a split in Tampa was huge for them. This is a very underrated team that might not have many familiar stars with the exception of John Tavares but are fully capable of winning this series. They should get the Game Three victory on home ice and go up 2-1.

BET NEW YORK ISLANDERS -110 OVER TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING