Florida Panthers vs Toronto Maple Leafs

The Florida Panthers travel to the Air Canada Centre to take on the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night.
After an impressive win over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden the Florida Panthers struggled during the rest of their metro area trip. They lost 2-1 to the New Jersey Devils on Saturday night and on Sunday evening they traveled to Nassau Coliseum to take on the Islanders. Their offense was nonexistent again in this one and there’s no way to win hockey games if you can’t score. Jacob Markstrom gave another strong performance in this one, stopping 34 of the 35 shots he faced, but the Panthers were shutout and fell by a final of 3-0. New York added two empty net goals for good measure. With all the injuries and young players in the lineup currently the Panthers are going to have a lot of nights like this the rest of the way. All they can hope for is that this benefits them heading into next season. This is a huge game for the Toronto Maple Leafs who can’t afford to lose games like this right now. They don’t want to be yet another Toronto club that lets a playoff berth slip away late in the season. They need to avoid a letdown despite this being the backend of a back-to-back and just getting through playing a home-and-home series with the rival Boston Bruins. It would be easy to see how this could be a difficult spot for Toronto but this team has what it takes to make the post season in what is an extremely weak Eastern Conference. They’ve got some good young goaltending that has been playing well this season and you’ve got to expect them to try and make some moves before the trade deadline to help get them over the hump. They won’t do that at the expense of their future but they should be able to find useful parts.
Florida is 5-1 the last six meetings between these clubs. The Over is 4-1 the last five.