The Toronto Maple Leafs (2-1-0) will look to get back to winning ways on Thursday when they visit the Florida Panthers (1-2-0).
Bookmaker Pinnacle offers odds at +103 for the Leafs to continue their prolific start to the season and score over 3.5 goals in regulation in the match-up. The odds are at +142 for the Panthers to tally over 3.5 goals in 60 minutes.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: October 18th, 5:00 P.M. (EST)
With Auston Matthews scoring back-to-back hat tricks, Toronto had a good start to the season by defeating Montreal and Minnesota, but the team couldn’t get anything going in Monday’s meeting with Chicago. Sheldon Keefe’s side managed to keep Connor Bedard off the scoresheet but suffered a 4-1 loss in front of home crowd.
Matthews remained active on Monday, firing off a game-high eight shots on goal with an additional eight attempts from him failing to hit the target. He became only the fifth player in NHL history to open a season with two straight hat tricks and has looked in great shape already just over a week into the new season.
The Panthers made a winning start to the week, defeating New Jersey on the road 4-3. Led by Sam Reinhart, the 2023 Stanley Cup finalists jumped to a 4-0 lead before the Devils made a late comeback attempt. The team struggled to close out the game but the win should be a confidence booster for the Panthers, who started the season with a pair of losses on opening week.
Florida has kicked off the season with a big piece missing from its top-six group in Sam Bennett, but the team has still looked very threatening in the attack, scoring four times in each of the last two games. It’s a very difficult task to match Toronto’s scoring, but the Panthers have proven that they can run up the score in a hurry.
There’s a lot of offensive talent on both teams, but the two have actually played out seven consecutive games with the under winning. No game had over six goals when they faced off in the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season, and there were also a couple of very tight head-to-head games near the end of the regular season, both needing overtime to decide the winner. It should be a tightly contested affair again between these Atlantic Division rivals on Thursday, with Florida looking to make it 10 wins in 14 home games in the match-up.
