Minnesota Wild vs. Toronto Maple Leafs Prediction, NHL Odds
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Edgar Chaput
Minnesota has had to travel overnight after vanquishing the Blue Jackets on Thursday, whereas the Leafs have not been in action since Tuesday’s thumping of the Sabres.
The NHL odds experts have pinned Toronto as +122 on the puck line and -210 on the money line. The over-under sits at 6 exactly.
Wild vs. Maple Leafs NHL Betting Odds
Contests between these sides have usually ended in the Ontario-based team’s favour, judging from the latter’s four wins in the previous five tilts. They met earlier this season in Minnesota and put on a good show for fans, with Toronto skating away 4-3 victors.
Dean Evason’s Wild side is enjoying a four-game winning streak. Their success has put them in a prime position to potentially leapfrog over both Winnipeg and Dallas in the Central Division. Minnesota has tallied 69 points on the season, putting them only two and three points behind the Jets and Stars respectively. Moreover, two recent victories were earned against the Stars and Kings, both Western Conference big fish. The team has been excellent defensively lately, which has led to the Under cashing in six of the last seven games.
Toronto returns to Scotiabank Arena after a brief two-game spell on the road. Winning the Atlantic is a fool’s errand, but a top-four finish in the East is still a legitimate possibility. They’ll have to be alert and on their toes. A couple of their recent losses have come against miserable squads like Columbus and Chicago. It should be no surprise that the over-under is only 6 when considering that Minnesota has the ninth-best defence for goals conceded per tilt and Toronto the fifth-best.
Minnesota Wild
Thursday night’s contest in Columbus was not the most exciting game fans got to see this season, but all that matters are the two earned points.
Most of the exciting moments transpired in the opening frame, most notably the only two goals scored in the entire contest. Brandon Dumaine (sixth) slotted in the puck amidst some zany, confused action in front of the Blue Jackets net to open the team’s tally. Kirill Kaprizov (34th) finally got the better of Joonas Korpisalo at 8:48 with a clever shot that went five-hole on a two-on-one. Korpisalo had robbed the Wild forward with his glove on a couple of earlier occasions, but allowed the low shot to slink between his pads. From there it was a matter of not allowing the Blue Jackets to muster significant chances, which they mostly accomplished except for a gaffe committed by Marc-André Fleury in the third that almost led to a goal. Fleury made 30 saves for a 2-0 shutout.
Toronto Maple Leafs
It didn’t take too long for the Maple Leafs to witness the quality of Ryan O’Reilly since trading for him last week. Tuesday night in Buffalo was his Maple Leaf coming out party, no doubt about it.
Whether it was the geographical proximity between the two cities or that Leafs fans hoarded most of the tickets to see O’Reilly firsthand as early as possible, you could have fooled someone by saying the game was in Toronto. O’Reilly (13th, 14th, 15th) was fed sublime passes early on often, scoring twice inside five minutes on some very handsome plays. The markers seemed to take the wind out of the Sabres (not that they had many fans in the building supporting them). Toronto piled it on four times in the opening period, with John Tavares (26th) and Michael Bunting (19th) making it 4-0. O’Reilly would earn his hat trick goal in an empty net after Buffalo attempted a respectable third-period comeback. Make the final 6-3 for the Maple Leafs.
