Tuesday night means hockey night, and the second week of the NHL season won’t disappoint with this slate. Eight games take place across the schedule with a playoff-caliber matchup down in Texas. The Dallas Stars (2-0-0) play their first home game of the campaign against the Minnesota Wild (1-1-0) in a battle between Central Division rivals.
Here’s an Stars vs. Wild prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook for Tuesday night.
Stars vs. Wild prediction, preview
These duels between Dallas and Minnesota always bring a fun angle with chirping between fans since after all, the Stars franchise relocated to Texas from the northern state back in 1993. With that consideration and the fact these teams generally just don’t like each other after matchup up on a regular basis in the same division, this shapes up as a pretty fun contest between quality sides.
The Stars are unbeaten to begin the year with standout victories over the Jets and Avalanche, both great teams they bounced from last season’s playoffs as well. Those wins came in two different ways — Dallas outshot Winnipeg 37-25 in a 5-4 final but nearly blew a 5-1 lead to start the final period, then got outshot themselves 22-39 against Colorado but ultimately stole a 5-4 road win in a shootout thanks to superstar Mikko Rantanen (against his former team, at that). It’s early and tough to draw a real conclusion from a two-game sample, but early signs for head coach Glen Gulutzan’s second tenure in Dallas are encouraging. Rantanen looks quite comfortable with four points in two games, while Jason Robertson also appears fully recovered from last season’s injury with a staggering 13 shots already. The penalty kill has also been effective with just one goal allowed on nine chances, though the power play needs some time to round into form given more opportunities (just 1-for-7 thus far).
Meanwhile, the Wild enter this game 1-1 with their own dichotomous performances. The season opener came with a 5-0 drubbing of the St. Louis Blues as recently extended Kirill Kaprizov notched three assists. He tallied another three points in the following contest with two goals, but his effort and Minnesota’s four scores weren’t enough to beat the Columbus Blue Jackets. After a shutout to start his campaign, Filip Gustavsson let six goals slip by on 31 attempts in the 7-4 loss. The good news is that the Wild have the NHL’s best power play through the season’s first week with PP% of 45.5% (5-for-11), and the 80% PK% is no reason to panic given the small sample of just two games. Matt Boldy is playing great hockey to start his year and actually ranks top-six in points thus far alongside Kaprizov, so this first line may truly excel against most opponents. However, Minnesota will also need to prove its depth can compete once the grind of the regular season really sets in.
Stars vs. Wild pick, best bet
DraftKings Sportsbook lists the Stars as strong -192 favorites on the Moneyline tonight, while the Wild come in at +160. The total sits at 5.5 combined goals.
Minnesota’s first line of Kaprizov, Boldy and Marco Rossi look quite formidable. Unfortunately for their case, the remainder of the lineup doesn’t seem as strong. Joel Eriksson Ek has anchored the second line at center, but the third and fourth groups aren’t as encouraging. The blue line collapsed last game as well, and they’re not particularly deep, especially in the third pairing. Gustavsson crumbled in his previous appearance, and while he’s a quality goaltender, he’ll have some stiff competition against the man across from him.
Dallas’ Jake Oettinger’s overall numbers through the small sample don’t look great, but he played lights-out hockey last time out. He faced a shocking 39 attempts and while he let four slip past, some of the saves he made were patently absurd. Whether stick side, glove side, opposite corner, etc., he came up with big stops that mattered most down the stretch. The Stars have more talent at the top than the Wild with Rantanen, Robertson, Roope Hintz and Wyatt Johnston, plus an elite duo of defensemen in Miro Heiskanen and Thomas Harley. However, a third line with Matt Duchene and Tyler Seguin give much more than Minnesota’s unit, and the fourth line looked quite solid to start the year, too.
Expect Kaprizov and his top-line teammates to make some noise in this one, but the Stars’ depth and goaltending should prevail in the end as they cover.
