Devils at Lightning 4/12/18 - NHL Picks & Predictions

On Thursday, the New Jersey Devils (49-29-5, 21-15-2 road) will open their NHL Eastern Conference quarterfinals best of seven series on the road against the Tampa Bay Lightning (54-23-3, 29-10-3 home). During the regular season, the two teams met on three occasions with the Devils sweeping the three games 5-4, 4-3 and 2-1.

Tampa Bay has the best scoring power in the NHL, but New Jersey seems to have the Lightning’s number having won each of the three head to head games during the regular season, but the playoffs are much different than the regular season. Tampa Bay besides its superiority over New Jersey on offense has an advantage in net with Andrei Vasilevskiy much better than the inconsistent Cory Schneider. Steve Stamkos will return healthy and that will help add to the Lightning’s offensive power as he will center their number one line. Taylor Hall led the Devils in goals scored with 39, in assists with 54 and in points with 98 during the regular season. Second in points scored was Nico Hischier with 52. Cory Schneider was 17-16-6 in 40 appearances in goal for the Devils with a goal’s against average of 2.93 and a save percentage of .907. During the regular season, New Jersey was 15th in goals scored per game at 3.0, 17th in goals against per game at 2.9, 10th in power play percentage at 21.4, and 8th in penalty kill percentage at 81.8.

Nikita Kucherov led the Lightning in goals scored during the regular season with 39, in assists with 61 and points with 100. Steven Stamkos, who was injured late in the season, should return and he was second in scoring with 86 points. In net for Tampa Bay, Andrei Vasilevskiy was 44-17-3 in 65 appearances with a goals against of 2.62 and a save percentage of .920. During the regular season, Tampa Bay was 1st in goals scored at 3.5, 13th in goals against at 2.9, 3rd in power play percentage at 23.9, and 27th in penalty kill percentage at 76.1.