The Minnesota Wild and the Seattle Kraken meet in NHL action from Climate Pledge Arena on Thursday night.
The Minnesota Wild will be out to build on their 3-2 win over the Vancouver Canucks in their last game. Mats Zuccarello leads the Wild with 7 points including sharing the team-lead in goals with Joel Eriksson Ek with 3 apiece, with Eriksson Ek leading the Wild with two power play goals this season. Kirill Kaprizov leads Minnesota with 5 assists while Matt Dumba and Ryan Hartman each have a team best +5 plus/minus rating this season. Cam Talbot’s had most of the action in goal, going 5-0 with a 2.55 GAA and a .906 save percentage while Kaapo Kahkonen has an 0-1 mark with a 5.36 GAA and an .828 save percentage.
The Seattle Kraken will try to build off of a 5-1 win over Montreal in their last game. Jared Mccann leads the Kraken with 7 points while posting 3 goals and sharing the tea-high with 4 assists, the same amount as Joonas Donskoi. Brandon Tanev has a team-high 5 goals while McCann leads Seattle with 2 power play goals and Mark Giordano and Alex Wennberg each have 4 points with a goal and 3 assists this season. Philipp Grubauer’s made the bulk of the starts in goal for Seattle, going 2-3-1 with a 3.29 GAA and an .883 save percentage this season.
Minnesota is 7-1 in their last 8 games as a road favorite and 39-17 in their last 56 games as a favorite while the over is 17-5 in their last 22 games against a team with a losing record. Seattle is 1-4 in their last 5 games overall while the over is 3-0-1 in their last 4 games as an underdog.
The Kraken is definitely worth a look given that they have a rowdy fan base and playing on the road in that kind of environment can be challenging. However, the Kraken finally got their home win, and now that that’s off of the list, it’s time for this team to get to work and against a rough, physical team like Minnesota, it may be difficult to do that. The Wild have played outstanding to start the year and I think they keep that going with a win in this one.