Tuesday night brings a Frozen Frenzy to the NHL slate with the entire league in action across the evening. With so many games to choose from, we’re honing in on some of the top matchups of the schedule. At 8 p.m. EST, a pair of teams from last season’s playoffs square off as the Winnipeg Jets battle the Minnesota Wild.
Get ready for the action with a Jets vs. Wild prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook for Tuesday night.
Jets vs. Wild prediction, preview
Winnipeg Jets
At 6-3-0, the Jets are off to a successful start this season. The loss of Nikolaj Ehlers did loom over the team throughout the offseason, but the franchise has largely been just fine on offense without him. An average of 3.33 GF ranks 12th in the NHL as Mark Scheifele (8G/5A) and Kyle Connor (4G/7A) have picked up the slack with 13 and 11 PTS. Gabriel Vilardi has also posted seven points on the top line with those two, tying him with top defenseman Josh Morissey. The third line of Nino Niederreiter and Morgan Barron has also proved surprisingly productive as well, though the bottom three are quite lacking on this roster. The Jets also have an elite defense through the opening weeks with just 2.44 GA on average as Morissey and Dylan DeMelo form one of the league’s best top pairings as a +8 and +7 in +/-, and of course, Connor Hellebuyck looks more like himself with a 2.16 GAA and .928 SV%. Winnipeg has found its form after coming out of the gate sluggishly.
Minnesota Wild
The home team hasn’t seen as much success. Locking up Kirill Kaprizov on a long-term contract made this a winning offseason, but the Wild are battling some injuries to depth players while dropping three straight games, two of which came via blowouts. Kaprizov has 14 points while Matt Boldy has 11, and four other players have either seven or eight points in 10 games. However, the problem here isn’t exactly putting the puck in net; instead it’s a defense that allows 3.90 GF per game, the third-worst mark of any team. Goaltenders Filip Gustavsson and Jesper Wallstedt have respective GAAs of 3.34 and 3.45 with a SV% of .897 and .863. Leaky play between the posts is a severe issue, but the blue liners haven’t provided much support in front of the netminders, either. The special teams numbers are some of the league’s most intriguing as well, but more on that shortly.
Jets vs. Wild pick, best bet
DraftKings Sportsbook lists the Jets as -115 road favorites on the Moneyline tonight, while the Wild enter with -105 odds to win outright. The total sits at 5.5 combined goals.
The vibes feel very different between these two sides. On one end, Winnipeg has the core of a contending team and have a goal differential of eight, second-best of any Western Conference team. They’re hitting at a respectable 26.4% rate on power plays with a 92.1% PK rate as well, so the special teams are seeing plenty of success and that kill unit ranks third overall in the sport. On the opposite end, Minnesota’s differential sits at -11, fourth-worst in the conference. While the power-play percentage of 32.5% remains third-best in hockey, a 60.9% rate on the penalty kill is just 0.2 percentage points away from the league’s worst and a whole 5.3 percentage points away from the third-worst mark.
The Wild can’t stop shots to begin with and have an abysmal penalty-kill unit. The Jets have a far superior blue line and goaltender, and their own offense has largely outperformed their opponent’s. The odds just don’t feel quite right given the disparity between these sides, so I’m hammering Winnipeg to win in regulation.
