Game 34: Winnipeg Jets vs Minnesota Wild pre-game report

While this may look like a battle between the 3rd and 7th place teams in the Central that undersells that the Wild are one of the hottest teams in the NHL since they made their coaching change just over a month ago. They have gone 11-3-0 to vault themselves back into the playoff conversation after it looked like their season was over. While they remain eight points back of the Jets this is setting itself up for one heck of a home and home series.

We learned on Friday that head coach Rick Bowness had ruled out David Gustafsson from playing in the games this weekend.

Morning Skate:

No morning skate. Lines and D pairs are based on practice yesterday.

Jets projected lines & D pairs:

Ehlers-Scheifele-Vilardi
Perfetti-Namestnikov-Iafallo
Niederreiter-Lowry-Appleton
Barron-Toninato-AJF

Morrissey-DeMelo
Dillon-Pionk
Samberg-Schmidt

Hellebuyck
Brossoit

Betway Odds:

While the Wild are coming in hot the Jets are similarly playing very well. Minnesota has been a much better team at home (10-4-2) than they are on the road (6-9-2) which is perhaps one of the factors the oddsmakers are giving a decent sized edge to the home team who are 11-5-2 at Canada Life so far this season. Be sure to check out the latest game day odds from Betway.

Up Next:

Puck drop is at 1 pm CST.  Be sure to head over to illegalcurve.com following the game for a recap of the action. You can also join us afterwards for the Illegal Curve Post-Game Show. (Please be sure to smash that like/subscribe button).