Tuesday night means hockey night! As usual, we’ve got a featured slate of games throughout the evening with the first contests dropping the puck at 7 p.m. EST. Half an hour after the first games begin, the Pittsburgh Penguins welcome the Edmonton Oilers to town in the first meeting between these franchises since the Stuart Skinner/Tristan Jarry goalie swap which took place last week. How will these two fare as they face off against their former teams?
Here’s an Oilers vs. Penguins prediction and pick on DraftKings Sportsbook for Tuesday night’s game.
Oilers vs. Penguins prediction, preview
It’s been a weird year for both of these teams overall. Believe it or not, a Penguins roster fending off an impending rebuild with aging cornerstones Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin actually sits just ahead of an Oilers group that just went to back-to-back Stanley Cups courtesy of Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl. There’s not a large gap between the points with Pittsburgh at 37 and Edmonton at 36; however, the former has played two fewer games than the latter to boot. One could say the Pens are overperforming, but it’s clear the Oil are far underperforming expectations as the halfway mark of the season approaches in the coming weeks.
The Penguins aren’t exactly dominant by any means with a +3 goal differential, 3.19 GF/GP (11th) and 2.94 GA/GP (13th). They are good though, even if a couple of recent late-game collapses at the hands of the Sharks and Mammoth turned the team into a temporary laughingstock on NHL Twitter/X. Where Pittsburgh truly excels is on special teams with the league’s top power play at 32.1% and sixth-best penalty kill at 84.0%. Those units give the Penguins quite the advantage over most opponents even if some of the talent on the lower lines is a bit less reliable. Of course, Crosby’s 34 points and Malkin’s 29 lead the team, not a surprise to anyone. They’re followed by Bryan Rust with 27, Erik Karlsson with 23 and Anthony Mantha with 20, the latter of whom is a team-high +10. Notably, tonight also marks the first start in black and yellow for netminder Stuart Skinner (2.83 GAA, .891 SV%) after he was shipped to Pittsburgh on Friday.
The visiting Oilers haven’t exactly looked like the team that made the Cup Final in back-to-back campaigns. The good news is they’re still scoring the third-most goals per game with 3.33 and connecting on the power play at a 30.6% clip, also third-best in the league. However, a shoddy defense has their goal differential at -4 with 3.39 GA/GP (27th) and a PK% of 79.1% (20th). Those latter two marks are what led Edmonton to trade Skinner, a future second-round pick and defenseman Brett Kulak for netminder Tristan Jarry. The interesting part is that while the goalie’s season statistics of a 2.69 GAA and .908 SV% are better than the player who was sent out for him, their career numbers are nearly identical. Time will tell whether the move works out, but Jarry did let seven goals slip by across his first two starts for his new team. Thankfully, he will have scoring support here from McDavid — the NHL’s second-leading points man with 52 — as well as Draisaitl with 43, Evan Bouchard with 30 and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins with 25.
Oilers vs. Penguins pick, best bet
DraftKings Sportsbook lists the Oilers as -142 favorites on the Moneyline while the Penguins come in at +120. Betting splits show 67% of straight bets in Edmonton’s favor on the road with a 58% of wagers leaning over on the total of 6.5 combined goals.
The drama and intrigue created by the goalie matchup tonight admittedly makes this game even more fun than it would’ve been to begin with. Narratives will surely be created, though a one-game sample doesn’t mean all that much in the grand scheme of things. Both of the netminders know their teammates’ tendencies, but these are both good offenses with varying degrees of star talent at the top. If the total were just 5.5 goals, it’d be much easier to take the over. I’m not sure I’m comfortable projecting seven scores though, so I’m avoiding that line and instead looking toward an outright winner.
Skinner is prone to silly mistakes, and against two of the game’s elite players in McDavid and Draisaitl, I do feel confident the goalie will crack here. It’s difficult to see Skinner not letting at least a couple through, and if Jarry can find his form after settling in over his first couple of games, the Oilers can certainly win this one on the road despite their 7-9-3 record as the visitors. I expect this matchup to mean a little more than usual with Draisaitl at 999 career points in the hunt for 1,000 with the opportunity to do so against his former teammate as well. I’m taking Edmonton to win in regulation at +110 odds.
