The Florida Panthers roared back in their Round 2 series with the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Down 2-0 after the first two games, the Cats took both contests in Sunrise to send the best-of-seven back to Canada knotted at two games apiece.
And it isn’t just that the Panthers won both games in Florida — it’s how they did it.
The Cats got off to a sluggish start in Game 3, but erased two different two-goal deficits before winning, 4-3, in overtime. Florida built off that momentum with a dominant performance in Game 4.
The Panthers are -144 favorites on the road Wednesday night and are now sitting at -200 to advance to Round 3.
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Florida was one of the best 5-on-5 teams in the NHL this season, so it was a bit surprising to see how messy things looked for the Cats in the first part of this series.
The Panthers seemed to figure things out in Game 4.
Florida outshot Toronto, 25-16, at 5-on-5 on Sunday night, and they held the Leafs to just six high-danger scoring chances.
Getting outplayed at 5-on-5 is usually no big deal to the Maple Leafs, but it becomes a different kind of problem against the defending champs.
Florida can beat you in so many different ways that you have to put up more of a fight at 5-on-5 than the Leafs did in Game 4.
It would be quite surprising if we didn’t see an improvement from Toronto in Game 5.
The Leafs don’t need to dominate at 5-on-5, but they need to find a way to close the gap between them and the Panthers at full strength.
One way for the Leafs to put up a better fight at 5-on-5 is to focus on limiting the amount of high-danger scoring chances they concede.
If we’ve learned anything from the first four games of this series, it’s that scoring chances will come few and far between for the Leafs. Generating more chances would be nice, but another way to combat that issue is by committing to locking things down in your own zone, in order to turn the game into a mud fight.
This game should be a white-knuckler, and I think the under is in range for a bet.
The Play: Under 5.5 (+100)
Michael Leboff is a long-suffering Islanders fan, but a long-profiting sports bettor with 10 years of experience in the gambling industry. He loves using game theory to help punters win bracket pools, find long shots, and learn how to beat the market in mainstream and niche sports.
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