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Posted on Saturday April 28 before Game 1

Boston +125 over TAMPA BAY

Series pick – Begins Saturday, April 28

3:00 PM. OT included. It took the Bruins seven games to get by the Maple Leafs but anyone that watched that series knows and understands that the Maple Leafs were extremely lucky that it went past four games because that’s how dominant the Bruins were. The only reason that Toronto extended the series was because Fredrik Andersen was great in two games while Tuukka Rask was shaky in seven games. Of course, goaltending could decide any of these games and the series too if Rask doesn’t pull up his socks or if Andrei Vasilevskiy stands on his head but we can almost guarantee that the Bruins will outplay the Bolts in the same way they dominated the Maple Leafs. You see, Tampa and Toronto are almost the mirror image of each other with both employing a potent offense and a suspect defense. That combo doesn’t win playoff series. 

Much was made at the trade deadline about the Lightning picking up defenseman Ryan McDonagh and if that trade occurred 20 years ago, we could understand the hype but it didn’t. In 2018, McDonagh is nothing more than a below average defenseman that will lose the race to the puck a 100% of the time to 100% of NHL players. The game is too fast for guys like McDonagh to thrive. He’s slow and he’s not a good decision maker. Why the NHL media was losing their shit on this deadline pickup is beyond us. McDonagh will play major minutes and so will Victor Hedman, who is decent enough offensively and defensively but he’s not that Drew Doughty like stud that controls so much when he’s out there. Hedman is a good offensive defenseman and an average defense defenseman. That leaves the Bolts with Dan Girardi, Anton Stralman, Mikhail Sergachev and Braydon Coburn rounding out a very suspect defensive group, much like the Maple Leafs and that’s where the big discrepancies lie within this series, much like it did against Toronto.

For the B’s, take your pick on a blueliner that would be a #1 or #2 on any team in the league between Tony Krug, Matt Grzelcyk or Charlie McAvoy. Grzelcyk is getting better with each game and is getting more minutes too while the other two are complete studs. Rounding out Boston’s juggernaut defense is Kevan Miller, Zdeno Chara and Adam McQuaid. The Bruins are a possession monster because they win almost every draw and because they play the cycle game better than any team in the league. The Bruins will lose this series only if Tuukka Rask is shaky but Rask is also capable of catching fire too so we’re not going to worry about that.

The NHL media will try sell the Bolts as the team to beat in the East simply because that’s what they read and hear everywhere else. All they do is focus on results and not the ingredients. Nashville is great because their record says so. Tampa is great for the same reason. Washington is really good because their record says so while Pittsburgh is vulnerable because their record says so. Pay attention to the ingredients and not results and if one does that, it is near impossible to make a case for Tampa to beat Boston in a seven-game series because this is a complete and utter mismatch behind the blueline. Give us the B’s as a pooch in any game against any team and you can pencil us in and we make no exception here.

NOTE: We will also be playing this series on a game by game basis regardless of this future bet as we see fit. In other words, we’re not going to allow any series bets to influence individual game wagers.

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