New Jersey Devils vs Pittsburgh Penguins NHL Picks, Odds, Predictions 3/18/21
2021-03-18 19:00:00 EDT
The Pittsburgh Penguins and the New Jersey Devils meet in NHL action from the Prudential Center on Thursday night.
The Pittsburgh Penguins come into this one looking to bounce back from a 2-1 loss to the Boston Bruins in their last matchup. Sidney Crosby leads the Pens in scoring with 29 points including team-highs of 11 goals and 18 assists while Jake Guentzel isn’t far behind with 11 goals of his own and 15 assists. Evgeni Malkin also has 16 assists as part of his 24 point tally this season. As a team, Pittsburgh is averaging 3.2 goals per game on 28.8 shots per contest with an 18.8% success rate on the power play while allowing 2.9 goals per game on 29.5 shots against per game with a 75% success rate defending the penalty kill this season.
The New Jersey Devils will try to build on a 3-2 win over Buffalo last time out. Pavel Zacha leads the Devils in scoring with 17 points including 7 goals and 10 assists while Jack Hughes has 14 points with 6 goals and 8 assists. Myles Wood, P.K. Subban and Ty Smith all have 13 points with Smith and Subban each adding 11 assists while Wood has a team-high 9 goals this season. As a team, New Jersey is averaging 2.5 goals per game on 29.6 shots per game with a 12.5% success rate on the power play while allowing 3.2 goals per game on 31 shots against per game with a 70.5% success rate on the penalty kill this season.
Pittsburgh is 14-2 in their last 16 games as a favorite and 6-1 in their last 7 games overall while the over is 6-1 in their last 7 games as a road favorite. New Jersey is 19-39 in their last 58 home games and 2-9 in their last 11 games overall while the under is 11-4 in their last 15 home games. The road team is 7-3 in the last 10 meetings between these two teams.
The Penguins haven’t been great on the road this season, but realistically, the Devils haven’t been good home or away as of late. The Penguins once again, are a team that I was really hard on to start the year and while it paid off early, the Penguins are starting to look more and more like one of the league’s best that we’ve become accustomed to seeing year in and year out. I’ll back the Penguins on the puck line here as I see them winning this one 5-2.
