Bet on Senators to pull off upset against Lightning as slight underdogs Monday night

For a couple of games it looked like the Ottawa Senators would make things at least a little interesting down the stretch. The Sens are not even on the fringes of the playoff race, but they won four games in a row and had two of the worst teams in the NHL (Anaheim and Chicago) on deck. Two more wins and the Senators could at least begin to dream.

Instead, the Senators lost both games and now find themselves 16 points behind the Detroit Red Wings in the playoff race.

Ottawa will try to bounce back against the Tampa Bay Lightning on Monday night. The Bolts are a -162 favorite at the time of writing.

While expectations were raised for Ottawa this season, the Lightning were expected to take a step back and struggle to even make the playoffs. The Bolts had to deal with an injury to all-world goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy and a lack of depth due to salary cap issues, which led to plenty of people betting against the Lightning to make the postseason.

For a while, it looked like the skeptics were right. Tampa struggled to get any sort of momentum and were staying afloat thanks to an MVP-caliber season from Nikita Kucherov. Tampa’s defense was leaky, the bottom of the roster wasn’t providing enough production and the goaltending was underwhelming. Things had to turn around quickly if Tampa was going to make a surge.

And turn around, they did. The Lightning have won 11 of their last 15 and now own a five-point cushion in the Wild Card race.

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Tampa’s 5-on-5 numbers are still not elite, but they’re the type of team that can get away with splitting the scoring chances at even strength because their power play is terrific and they have some of the best playmakers in the league to make sure they convert the opportunities they do create.

Ottawa’s 5-on-5 numbers, believe it or not, have been terrific of late. The Sens have never had issues driving play in the right direction, they just have a habit of making costly mistakes and their goaltending has been abysmal for most of the season.

On paper, this matchup is a lot closer than the odds imply and if the Senators can stay disciplined, which is far from guaranteed, they should have a decent chance of pulling the upset on Monday night.

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