The Minnesota Wild and the Florida Panthers meet in NHL action from the BB&T Center on Saturday night.
The Minnesota Wild will be looking to add to their 7-2 win over the Dallas Stars in their last matchup. Kirill Kaprizov leads the Wild in scoring with 15 points including a team-high 11 assists while Mats Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman each have 12 points with Hartman putting up a team-high 8 goals with 4 assists and Zuccarello logging 4 goals with 8 helpers. Marcus Foligno and Kevin Fiala each have 10 points as well with Foligno adding 5 goals and 5 apples and Fiala chipped in 8 assists as well. Hartman also has a team-high +11 plus/minus rating as well this season. Cam Talbot’s seen the bulk of Minnesota’s action in goal, going 9-4 with a 2.85 GAA and a .906 save percentage this season.
The Florida Panthers will try to add to their 4-1 win over the New Jersey Devils in their last game. Aleksander Barkov and Jonathan Huberdeau each hve 17 points with Barkov logging a team-high 9 goals with 8 assists and Huberdeau logging a team-high 11 assists with 6 goals this season. Anthony Duclair has 16 points with 9 goals of his own as well as a team-best +14 plus/minus rating while Carter Verhaeghe has 14 points with 9 assists and Aaron Ekblad has 13 points with 8 assists and a +14 plus/minus as well this season. Segei Bobrovsky has gone 7-0-2 with a 1.78 GAA and a .942 save percentage while Spencer Knight’s gone 5-2-1 with a 2.98 GAA and a .904 save percentage this season.
Minnesota is 6-2 in their last 8 games overall and 8-2 in their last 10 Saturday games while the over is 4-0-1 in their last 5 games against the Atlantic division. Florida is 23-4 in their last 27 home games and 12-5 in their last 17 games overall while the under is 8-3-1 in their last 12 games following a win.
This is going to be an entertaining matchup, but I’m still leaning towards the over here. The Wild, who usually play a lower-scoring brand of hockey, have been finding that back of the net a lot more often this season while Florida always packs an offensive punch and I just think that they’re both playing fantastic hockey and this has potential to be the game of the night. Give me the over here.