Minnesota Wild at San Jose Sharks
The Wild have won three of their last four games and are 8-3 overall in January. They also got Zach Parise back in their most recent game after missing a month with injury and that’s a big boost to the depth of this forward group. If the Wild want to start winning consistently though, their power play has to start contributing: over their previous seven games, the Wild are 0-for-19 and that’s pretty bad. Their penalty kill has given up five goals against in their last five games as well, so they need to tidy up their special teams if they want to win in San Jose (which I don’t think they will).
The Sharks have now won five games in a row and while that’s impressive, what’s more impressive are just the seven goals they’ve given up in those five games, including two shootouts. It’s now been four straight games that the Sharks have allowed under 30 shots on goal and seven out of their last eight. Without Logan Couture and Tomas Hertl, this team has changed the way they play and they’re starting to get the consistent results. It also doesn’t hurt when Joe Pavelski has six goals in his last three games and 11 goals in his last 10 games.
These two teams faced each other in December, both skating away with a 3-1 win in each other’s barn. Of course, both those games were back in early-mid December when both teams were a bit healthier than they were now: Josh Harding, Tomas Hertl, Logan Couture and Mikko Koivu were all a part of those games, none of them will be in this game.
I will lean whoever is in net for San Jose but I don’t feel overly confident about it. Other than that, I expect a low-scoring game here so be wary of the higher-priced players.
|
Top RW Value |
Top LW Value |
Top C Value |
Top D Value |
Bargain Bin |
|
Nino Niederreiter $6153 |
Matt Nieto (SJS) $6355 |
Mikael Granlund $5920 |
(SJS) $6225 |
(SJS) $4283 |
Good luck and don’t forget to check out our NHL freerool this afternoon.
