Lightning Are Heavy Favorites to Beat Canadiens in Stanley Cup Final

The Stanley Cup Finals are set.

Many people predicted at the beginning of the postseason that the Tampa Bay Lightning would be in contention for their second straight Stanley Cup, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who predicted that it’d be the Montreal Canadiens that they’d face in the finals.

Montreal finds itself as a sizable underdog once again. WynnBET has released odds to win the series, and it has the Lightning set as -275 (bet $275 to profit $100) favorites to lift Lord Stanley’s Cup for the second straight year. Meanwhile, the Canadiens are set as +210 underdogs. They’ve been underdogs of at least +200 or longer odds in three for their four series in the playoffs.

The storyline of the series will be whether or not the high power Lightning offense will be able to score goals on the Canadiens scrappy defense, backed by goaltender Carey Price who has been hot in the postseason.

The Lightning are averaging 3.18 goals per sixty minutes in the playoffs, the second highest mark among all postseason teams next to the Colorado Avalanche, who were eliminated by the Vegas Golden Knights in the second round.

This series will also feature a battle between the two best goaltenders in the NHL playoffs. Andrei Vasilevskiy of the Lightning sports the best save percentage in the postseason at .936, but Price is right behind him at .934.

The offensive advantage surely goes to Tampa Bay, as the top five point getters in the playoffs all belong to the Lightning. All five players have more points than the Habs leading point getter, who has been Tyler Toffoli at 14 points. Nikita Kucherov tops the list for Tampa Bay at 27 points, which is an eye-popping average of 1.5 points per game.

Game 1 of the Stanley Cup Finals is set to go down on Monday night in Tampa Bay. The Lightning are set as -200 favorites and the total for the game is set at 5.5 goals.