The Tampa Bay Lightning suffered a lopsided 5-1 defeat to the Washington Capitals on Friday, and hope to get their revenge on home ice. Here are our top Capitals-Lightning picks.
This season has been far from a cake walk for Tampa Bay. Luckily, the Bolts have been playing reasonably well considering they've battled through subpar goaltending and the repercussions of players lost in the offseason. Starting backstop Andrei Vasilevskiy will undoubtedly pick up the slack eventually, but the rest of the team will have to start pulling thei r weight as well. It's early, but there's also never a good time to be two points out of a wild-card spot.
Washington is in a similar position, albeit a bit worse with just one more point in two more games played. On the bright side, the goaltending has been just fine as netminder Darcy Kuemper has a 2.35 goals-against average and a .920 save percentage despite also having a 5-6-1 record. Will he be the difference once again?
Here are our Capitals-Lightning NHL picks for Sunday (odds via Caesars Sportsbook, DraftKings Sportsbook, FanDuel Sportsbook; pick confidence based on a 1-to-5-star scale).