Follow @james_tanner123 Of the teams remaining in the NHL playoffs, the Tampa Bay Lightning are the most heavily favored team to win the Stanley Cup. While odds vary, it seems you'd have to bet around $240 to win $100 if you wanted to put your money on the Bolts.
Though one series is yet to be decided, the Capitals will most likely be the longest shot team to win. Given how this year has gone (see: Vegas) it might not be a bad idea to go with the Caps. Right now, you could win about $160 by betting $100 on the Caps.
While it's possible I am misunderstanding the line, because I don't bet on games, I am reasonably confident that's how it works. If not, I'm sure someone will tell me, as one time, I made a joke about Smooth Jazz and then referenced Kenny G - and somebody just went off and wrote a totally bizarre amount of words in a DM about why I was an idiot for mixing up different jazz styles.
Anyways, good times!
The Lightning can potentially match the Caps in goal, they've definitely got a better Blue Line (although at least Dan Girardi will cancel out Brooks Orpik) and their forwards are about ten times deeper than the Caps.
So you can see why the Lightning are favored.
If there's one area to exploit, it's that the Lightning gave up some of the highest amounts of shots in the league this year. Then again, in the playoffs they've completely reversed this tread (although in just 11 games vs 82).
Really, like anything else, the answer to who will win this series is amazingly pedestrian. It doesn't take great heights of analytical skill to know that whoever has the best goalie almost always wins at hockey.
Braden Holtby has been excellent so far and there's no reason to doubt him now. Maybe it's the Capitals ever-present playoff failures of the past that have made it so, but for some reason Holtby tends to get ignored when people are talking best goalies in the league.
Fleury is having a run that is all-time worthy, but just about everyone seems to forget that he lost his job to a rookie and was universally considered overrated.
Hellebyuck is having his first real good season, as is Vasilevskiy.
Pekke Rinne reversed five years of declining numbers to post his best ever season, despite the odds of that happening being somewhere near zero.
Even though I'm certain that Holtby would be the lowest rated goalie left in the playoffs if you surveyed NHL fans, he does have the current best body of work over the past several years, of anyone left.
From a talent/experience perspective that takes into account more than just the last couple of months, you could very well say that he's the best goalie left in these playoffs.
If the Capitals are going to advance, he's going to have to make that true.