Tampa Bay Lightning vs Florida Panthers Prediction: Expect a high-productive match

Prediction for the NHL Tampa Bay Lightning vs Florida Panthers match, which will take place on March 1. Check the team conditions and choose several betting options.

Tampa Bay is an experienced team that has stopped stressing in the regular season in recent years, saving their energy and emotion for the cup battles, where the Lightning have made it to the final playoff series three times in a row. Now they took the regular-season series without much trepidation, but even so, the players have so much skill that they quickly placed themselves in the cup eight. In the last nine meetings, they have allowed four losses and five wins, which is not too bad, but the defeat by Pittsburgh the day before (3:7) can hardly be called pleasant. Tampa Bay still sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference standings.

Florida Panthers still have a claim to the title of the main disappointment of this season. A year ago, the Panthers set many club records and won the President's Trophy for the regular season, but poor playoff performance led to the change of their head coach. But now, under Paul Maurice, the Southerners are in danger of not getting into the cup battles, as they began to experience performance problems from the very first games, which have continued to this day. In the last seven games, the Red and Blue have only three wins and four losses during regular time, which allowed them to drop to 11th place in the Eastern Conference standings.

Tampa Bay and Florida faced each other in the last playoffs, where the Lightning destroyed their opponent in the series, 4:0, after which things went downhill for the Panthers. The change of the head coach did not lead to better results, so they are now outside the top-8 of the Eastern Conference, at risk of missing the Cup battles. John Cooper's squad has no such problems. They play very decently, especially at home, where they won 14 of the last 16 games. Now they are the favorites in the confrontation, and to make a bet on the victory of Tampa Bay is possible.

In the current regular championship, Florida demonstrates modest results, but it is still interesting to follow the games of the southerners as they play spectacularly and productively. Over their last eight road games, the Panthers have combined for 67 goals against (8.38 goals-against average per game). There is no doubt that Paul Morris's men will try not to close in their encounter with Tampa Bay either, so we would consider a total over 6.5, and we also have to look into Mikhail Sergachev's 0.5-point total.