Vegas Golden Knights vs. Minnesota Wild NHL Picks, Odds, Predictions 5/22/2021

The Vegas Golden Knights and the Minnesota Wild meet in game four of their First Round matchup in NHL action from the Xcel Energy Center on Saturday night.

The Vegas Golden Knights will look to take a 3-1 series lead back home to push the Wild to the brink of elimination after a 5-2 win over Minnesota last time out. Ryan Hartman opened the scoring for Minnesota just 2:16 into the game and Joel Eriksson Ek would push the lead to 2-0 for the Wild just over six minutes later, but Mark Stone would get Vegas on the board just under nine minutes into the second period and Patrick Brown and Reilly Smith would tie the game and give Vegas the lead respectively with goals 2:14 apart to give Vegas a 3-2 lead after 40 minutes of play. William Karlsson added an insurance marker for Vegas to make it 4-2 with 2:24 to play and Stone would score his 2^nd of the game on an empty net to give the Knights an insurmountable 5-2 lead that they would ride all the way to the final horn.

Marc-Andre Fleury got the win after stopping 14 of 16 shots faced in the winning effort for Vegas while Cam Talbot took the loss for Minnesota after allowing 4 goals on 39 shots faced in the losing effort.

Vegas is 39-13 in their last 52 games as a favorite and 20-8 in their last 28 road games while the under is 4-1 in their last 5 games against a team with a winning record. Minnesota is 20-6 in their last 26 home games and 1-4 in their last 5 games overall while the over is 8-1 in their last 9 games as a home underdog. The road team is 5-2 in the last 7 meetings between these two teams.

We saw a huge scoring outburst in game three but I think we get back to basics in game four as this game is too big for Minnesota to take lightly and the Golden Knights still boast the stingiest defense in the NHL. I wouldn’t be surprised with a 3-2 game whichever way you slice it here, so give me the under in this one.