The Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers will meet at an interesting time on Tuesday. The Panthers are 3-6-1 in their last 10 games which now has them closer to being a Wildcard team than they are to being the Atlantic Division winner.

One way or the other, this should be a tremendous matchup as two Stanley Cup contenders try to fine-tune their game with just nine days remaining in the regular season.

I’ll detail the relevant game notes, as well as outline my favourite betting angles below.

Head coach Craig Berube’s side will have an excellent opportunity to sharpen their game ahead of the postseason in this matchup, as they take on a Panthers side that will likely be well-motivated after last week’s loss. When these teams met last Wednesday, the Panthers were playing night two of a back-to-back and, for the third time in three nights, were without several key skaters including Aleksander Barkov, so the Panthers should offer a stiffer test in tonight’s matchup.

The Leafs enter this matchup in a good rest scenario, as this will be just their third matchup since March 30th. They were sharp in all facets of the game in Saturday’s win over the Columbus Blue Jackets, as they shut out a red-hot Blue Jackets offence with a high-quality defensive performance.

The Leafs top defensive pairing of Morgan Rielly and Brandon Carlo continues to play at a much higher level than we saw early on in Carlo’s tenure with the Leafs and now holds a 58.9% expected goal share in 171.3 minutes of play.

While the third pairing may continue to be somewhat of a flaw moving forward, Toronto could have its best top four of the ‘core-four’ era if the Rielly/Carlo unit continues to be this effective, as Chris Tanev and Jake McCabe continue to form one of the best shutdown pairings in the league.

Joseph Woll has been confirmed as the starting goaltender in this matchup, which still suggests he is currently viewed as the team’s number two, as tomorrow’s matchup in Tampa Bay offers a more notable impact standings wise. He holds a .906 save percentage and +12.5 GSAx rating in 39 appearances this season.

Many observers are questioning if the Panthers are ‘tanking’ right now, as suddenly the defending Stanley Cup Champions are playing their worst hockey of the season while resting several key pieces with nagging injuries. Personally, I think it seems extremely hard to believe a proud Panthers team is actually throwing games and, more so simply making logical personnel decisions.

The regular season is a grind, and entering the playoffs healthy makes more of a difference than who your opponent is. So is it that hard to respect the Panthers’ decision to play it safe with key skaters such as Sam Bennett, Aleksander Barkov and Matthew Tkachuk?

Even Leafs fans aren’t in complete agreement about whom they would prefer to face in Round One, and home ice has offered little to no advantage in the playoffs for a fairly large sample. Road teams dominated last postseason and are above .500 dating back to 2018, despite the fact that higher seeds play more home games, which should theoretically skew the data towards home dominance.

The fact that it is debatable how motivated the Panthers are to win right now makes it an interesting time to analyze them from a handicapping perspective. Statistically, it appears that they have been in more of an unlucky rut recently than being a team that is ‘throwing games.’

They hold a 52.84% expected goal share over the last 10 matchups and have allowed only 2.97 xGA/60. Allowing the sixth fewest chances against doesn’t exactly sound like a team not interested in winning, and the slight dropoff compared to their usual defensive dominance likely revolves more so around lesser personnel.

As we discussed when these teams met last week in Toronto, the Panthers acquisition of Seth Jones currently looks like a disaster. It still wouldn’t be surprising to see head coach Paul Maurice and his coaching staff find a way to get more from Jones, but the early results are ugly.

In 180.4 minutes together, Jones and Gustav Forsling hold an expected goal share of 49.1%, which is actually the worst mark of any Panthers tandem to spend over 100 minutes together this season, and they have been outscored 6-5 where it counts. While those marks aren’t really that awful, it’s important to consider how Forsling has fared with every other defensive partner over the last few seasons.

The Panthers will get a massive addition to the lineup for this game, as Barkov is set to return from a three-game absence and appears likely to play alongside Carter Verhaeghe and Sam Reinhart on the top line.

Another key reason the Panthers have lost at a higher rate recently has been the dropoff in form between newly acquired backup Vitek Vanecek compared to former backup Spencer Knight. Vanecek is 1-3-1 since arriving in Florida with a save percentage of .894. The Panthers have confirmed that Sergei Bobrovsky will start in this matchup, so Vanecek’s lesser play will not be a factor.

Bobrovsky holds a +9.8 GSAx rating and a .906 save percentage in 51 appearances this season.

Goal scoring has dropped significantly across the NHL over the last week of play, likely due to the fact that more games are featuring a playoff-type style of play. 15 teams have averaged 2.67 goals per game or less in that span, while 2.67 goals per game would rank 29th over the entirety of the season.

This appears to be a good spot to target the recent trend of lower-scoring hockey, as these two rivals will likely be keen to minimize mistakes defensively as they shore up their games for the postseason. Toronto won 3-2 last week in a closely contested matchup, and we will likely see a similar type of game tonight.

Barkov’s return to the lineup obviously helps the Panthers offensive upside, but the return of the reigning Selke Trophy winner will also make generating quality looks much more difficult for Toronto’s offensive stars.

At -110 I see value backing this matchup to stay under 5.5 goals, and would play it down to -115.