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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

NY Rangers +145 over Tampa Bay

7:15 PM EST. The Lightning roll into Manhattan as deserved favorites. They're 4-1, they've ripped off four straight wins, and Brandon Hagel just hung a hat trick on the Islanders in a 5-3 win on Saturday. But we're not laying -162 with a road favourite against a home underdog that has already beaten them twice this month. At this price, the Rangers are the play at the Garden, and it's not just a price grab.

Start with the head-to-head, because it's lopsided. The Rangers have taken six of the last ten meetings, including both clashes this month: a 4-2 win in Tampa followed by the 5-1 season-opening rout at MSG that featured Igor Shesterkin scoring a goalie goal. And here's the number that matters most — Andrei Vasilevskiy is 7-10-2 with a 3.00 goals-against average and a .900 save percentage in 19 career regular-season games against the Rangers. For a future Hall of Famer, that's a genuine house of horrors, and New York has clearly figured something out about him.

Then there's the goaltending twist nobody saw coming. Losing Shesterkin for the season should have been a death sentence, and with Joonas Korpisalo also on IR, the crease belongs to Dylan Garand. All the kid has done is go 2-1-0 with a 1.20 goals-against average and a .945 save percentage, backstopping a 6-2 demolition of Vancouver in the first game of the post-Shesterkin era. The skaters have rallied around him — Alexis Lafreniere is riding a three-game goal streak and leads the club with five goals and eight points, while Mika Zibanejad (31 points in 40 career games vs. Tampa) and Adam Fox (14 points in 17) have feasted on this opponent for years. That's also four straight wins on home ice for the Blueshirts.

Tampa's streak is real, but look at the victims: the Islanders, Wild, Flyers and Capitals. The one genuine contender they faced this season waxed them 5-1. The Rangers are 2-1 as underdogs already this year, the computer models are calling for a 3-2 New York win, and getting +145 at home against a team you own is simply too much value to pass up. 

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