Face-off: 1900 ET, 16/04/2022
Arena: Canadian Tire Centre
Toronto have only dropped three points from their last 10 matches and are fancied to maintain that momentum when visiting Ottawa.
The Senators are coming off wins at Detroit and Boston this week, so this is far from a formality, but the Maple Leafs should just have too much firepower up front.
We’re happy to take 2.05 for an away win and over 5.5 goals in the game in our Ottawa Senators vs Toronto Maple Leafs predictions.
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Ottawa Senators Odds
Ottawa could have been forgiven for starting to think about their holidays after a trio of defeats but instead responded with a couple of nice victories.
The Senators followed up Tuesday’s 4-1 triumph at Detroit by battling for a 3-2 success at Boston on Thursday.
Tim Stutzle had a goal and two assists, while Brady Tkachuk had a goal and an assist as they came from 2-0 down to prevail at TD Garden.
“We didn’t like the way we played in the first period and we wanted to come out back to our identity – and that was shooting pucks,” declared Tkachuk.
“That was a huge maturity moment for our team to come back, get back to our game and not panic there.”
Anton Forsberg did have to make 40 saves, though, and Toronto may be better equipped to exploit some defensive frailties.
Looking at the NHL odds, we like 2.65 for the visitors to prevail in regular time and both teams to score at least twice.
Toronto Maple Leafs Odds
Toronto suffered a bizarre blip when beaten 5-2 by Buffalo but bounced back the only way they know how when blitzing Washington 7-3.
Auston Matthews warrants a special mention after he became the third player to get 100 points in a season for the club via two assists.
William Nylander, Michael Bunting and Ilya Mikheyev all scored twice, while John Tavares had four assists for the Maple Leafs.
Head coach Sheldon Keefe was delighted to see other players contributing after Matthews and Mitch Marner had dominated of late.
“That’s big,” stated Keefe. “We need to have other guys feeling good about their game, confident in their ability to score.”
Toronto have a number of seasoned professionals pumped up and ready to go deep into the post-season.
This won’t be a push-over, but 6.25 for the Maple Leafs to oblige by exactly two goals is added to our NHL predictions, along with 17.0 for a 4-2 scoreline.
Additional stats
Last result:
Boston 2-3 OTTAWA
TORONTO 7-3 Washington
Season head-to-head: Toronto 6-0 Ottawa, Toronto 3-1 Ottawa, Ottawa 3-2 Toronto
