NHL Hockey Preview: Tampa Bay Lightning at New Jersey Devils

Added on Mar 02, 2011 by Jack Thurman in

NHL

This game didn’t look like much a few months ago when Tampa Bay was leading the Eastern Conference and New Jersey was the biggest doormat in the NHL. Things are drastically different now–Tampa Bay is still near the top of the table but New Jersey has been playing like a team possessed since Jacques Lemaire returned as head coach. The Devils have a realistic shot at making the playoffs which was downright unfathomable six weeks ago.

Tampa Bay Lightning at New Jersey Devils
March 2, 2011 4:05 PM Pacific

This is a rematch of last Friday’s game in Tampa where New Jersey fought tooth and nail and bottled up the Lightning’s offense before losing 2-1. The Devils still lead the season series 2-1 after taking the first two meetings of the year. Curiously, both of the Devils wins earlier this season went Over the total but we have no interest in looking that way now with the way New Jersey is playing defense. Jacques Lemaire has his team playing defense at an incredible level after starting the season as one of the worst scoring defense teams in the league. New Jersey has won 9 of their last 10, are 12-2-1 in their last 15 games. They’ve won 17 of their last 21 with only 2 losses in regulation. The Devils still aren’t scoring a lot of goals, but have been playing stifling defense and generally out working their opponents night after night. They’ve only allowed more than 3 goals once in their last 21 games and have allowed a total of 34 in that stretch–that’s a 1.61 goals against average over a quarter season of NHL hockey.

In their past 12 games the Devils have played only one Over the total with 7 Under and 4 push. You’re obviously going to get a fair share of ‘pushes’ when you start dealing with 5 totals. Notwithstanding their loss in Tampa recently the Devils have dominated head to head play in this series–New Jersey has won 9 of the last 11 meetings including 4 of the last 5 at home. Even in a losing cause we were impressed with the way that Jacques Lemaire’s defense bottled up the high octane Tampa offense and we’ll look for the Devils to get one back in a game that scores Under the total.

Bet New Jersey Devils -135 over Tampa Bay Lightning
Bet New Jersey/Tampa Bay UN 5 +115