Maple Leafs vs. Devils Ontario odds and best bets: Props and predictions for March 7

The Toronto Maple Leafs will wrap up a five-game road trip tonight when they take on the New Jersey Devils at Prudential Center on Tuesday night.

The pregame narrative: We’ll fade the Leafs amid an uninspiring run of form — especially with two of their major contributors injured. Meanwhile, Dawson Mercer has been on fire and William Nylander should continue peppering the goal.

NHL odds as of 9:23 a.m. on 03/07/2023.

Maple Leafs vs. Devils odds and picks

Best Bet: Devils ML (-132)

The new-look Leafs are going to need some time to gel, but it certainly doesn’t help that they just lost Ryan O’Reilly (LTIR) and John Tavares to injury.

Toronto has lost two of its past three games and they were rather uncompetitive affairs.

The Buds got slapped 5-2 by the Edmonton Oilers and then lost 4-1 to the struggling Vancouver Canucks a few days after that. Now they’ll play the surging Devils to close out a five-game road trip.

New Jersey is in a race to top the Metropolitan Division and has won 10 of its past 14 games. Of those four losses, three were on the road.

The Devils have won eight of their last nine home games and outscored their opponents by 16 goals in that span.

Tom Fitzgerald saw how this group was coming together and wasted no time bolstering it at the trade deadline. New Jersey brought in Timo Meier from the San Jose Sharks, and he wasted no time scoring nine minutes into his Devils debut on Sunday.

He brings even more firepower to an offence that ranks third in 5v5 chances-for on the season (3215) and fifth in 5v5 high-danger chances-for (714), per Natural Stat Trick.

Expect New Jersey to handle its business at home tonight.

Key stat: The Devils are 18-11-2 at home this season.

Quick picks

Mercer to register a point (-127): This line feels a tad disrespectful considering what Mercer has been doing lately.

The 21-year-old centre has recorded a point in nine straight games with a total of 10 goals and 16 points in that span. He’s been unbelievably hot and that shouldn’t stop tonight.

Mercer has also seen a drastic — and well-deserved — increase in ice time. He was averaging 15:48 in January and is sitting at 19:34 after the first three games of March.

Nylander over 3.5 shots (-106): You can make a legitimate case that Nylander has been Toronto’s best player this season.

He leads the team in goals (33), is second in points (74) and is also averaging 3.6 shots per game.

Nylander is expected to drive his own line with Tavares out and that should lead to plenty of more shooting opportunities.

He recently had five SOT against the Canucks while Toronto was down some forwards, and he has cleared this mark in five of his past 10 games.

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