Bet on a tie game between the Flyers and Maple Leafs in regulation on Thursday night in Philly

The Philadelphia Flyers begin a grueling stretch of schedule with a battle against the Toronto Maple Leafs on Thursday night. The contest marks the first of seven straight dates against teams ahead of them in the standings. That’s not ideal when you’re in the midst of a playoff race with just 16 games left in the season.

Philadelphia is a +115 home underdog.

It’s been a bit of a mixed bag for the Flyers of late. Philadelphia has a 4-2-1 record over its last seven contests and has a couple of impressive wins in that span, but it also has a few flat losses to the Washington Capitals, St. Louis Blues and Tampa Bay Lightning in that stretch. And if you expand back further, you’d see that the Flyers have been a .500 hockey club for the better part of a month. Philadelphia is 5-5-2 since Feb. 15.

At some point the Flyers will need to improve on that, but just getting through this stretch with their playoff hopes intact would be a huge accomplishment.

The good news for Philadelphia is that it won’t face the Maple Leafs at full strength on Thursday. Mitch Marner is out and the Buds are working in a few new acquisitions on the blueline.

The bad news for the Flyers is that they’ve got their own lineup issues on defense. Nick Seeler, Jamie Drysdale and Rasmus Ristolainen are all injured, while Sean Walker was traded at the deadline. That’s a pretty notable cluster on a blueline that was already thin.

Even with the injuries, the Flyers are still getting plenty of respect in the betting market. This line opened with Philadelphia hovering around +120 and has since shortened a bit to +115 at the time of writing. I don’t see much value in backing either side at these prices, but I do think that this contest has the makings of a tightly-checked affair.

Both sides will want to keep things tidy to ease the burden on the blueline and that should keep it pretty low-event. As long as both goaltenders are sharp, this feels like a game that shouldn’t get out of hand and that puts value on the 60-minute draw at +320.

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