Toronto Maple Leafs vs Calgary Flames Prediction: Best Bet for Monday

Calgary has won three straight by strangling games, allowing four goals across the three, and Toronto has won four straight by opening games up, scoring 21 goals across the four. One of those styles breaks at the Saddledome on Monday, and Calgary's 2.30 goals per game is the thinnest offense Toronto has faced on its run.

The Matchup

Toronto comes in as the hottest team on Monday's slate, and the run has a shape. The Maple Leafs have won four straight, beating San Jose 3-1, Columbus 6-2, the Rangers 5-4 and Edmonton 7-2, and the last two came on the road, at the Rangers and at Edmonton. Auston Matthews drives it.

He has 9 goals and 10 assists for 19 points in 13 games, and William Nylander is right behind him with 8 goals and 18 points, so Toronto's top line gives it two finishers Calgary simply does not have. The Maple Leafs score 3.85 goals per game and allow 3.08, a plus-0.77 differential built on outscoring teams rather than shutting them down.

Toronto is doing this without John Tavares, who is on injured reserve with a lower-body injury. Losing a top-two center usually bends a team's scoring down. Toronto's has bent up, because Matthews and Nylander have absorbed the minutes and the power-play time, and the Leafs' power play converts at 30.2 percent.

The soft spot is the crease. Sergei Bobrovsky is 3-3-2 with a 3.10 goals-against average and an .895 save percentage, and Anthony Stolarz has been the steadier of the two at 4-1-0 and 2.79. Either way, Toronto asks its goalie to make the routine saves and lets its scorers win the game.

Calgary's streak is the mirror image. The Flames have won three straight, against Carolina, Minnesota and Detroit, by scores of 3-2, 2-1 and 4-1. Four goals allowed in three games is excellent defensive hockey, and Calgary needed every bit of it, because the Flames score 2.30 goals per game and allow 3.90 on the season.

Joel Farabee leads Calgary with 9 points, and Morgan Frost's 3 goals are the team high. That is the whole tension in this game. Calgary wins by keeping the score at two or three. Toronto wins by pushing it to five or six, and Toronto has been winning that argument for two weeks.

Key Factors

Calgary's one reliable scoring route is its power play, which converts at 32.0 percent. It runs straight into the worst possible matchup. Toronto kills penalties at 95.2 percent, the best mark in the league, so the Flames' man advantage, the thing that has kept a 2.30-goal offense afloat, is the thing Toronto takes away most completely. If Calgary has to score at even strength, it has to do it with a lineup whose leading scorer has 9 points against a team whose top two have 37 between them.

The goaltending split is where Calgary's season numbers lie a little, and it cuts both ways. The Flames' 3.90 goals against per game is dragged down by Dustin Wolf's five starts, in which he is 1-4-0 with a 4.85 goals-against average and an .834 save percentage.

Devin Cooley has been far better at 3-2-0, 2.80 and .912, and Calgary's three-game win streak has the look of the Cooley version of this team. If Cooley starts and plays to that level, Calgary can drag Toronto into the 2-1 game it wants, and a puck line on the road team is in trouble all night.

Calgary is also missing players Toronto does not have to account for. Jonathan Huberdeau is on injured reserve with a hip injury, which takes a playmaking winger out of an already thin top six. Mikael Backlund is day to day with an upper-body injury. Backlund is Calgary's matchup center, the player the Flames would put against Matthews, and his absence or limitation changes that assignment completely.

Keep an eye on whether Backlund plays before placing a bet. The counterpoint sits right there. A rested home team on a three-game win streak, with the steadier goalie and a 32.0 percent power play, does not need much to keep this at one goal. Toronto's case is that its kill erases the power play, its top line outclasses Calgary's, and a team scoring 2.30 goals per game eventually runs out of 2-1 wins.

Every pick is published with its line before the game. Odds via consensus sportsbooks at time of writing and move constantly. Must be 21+. If gambling is a problem, call or text 1-800-GAMBLER.