- 1 Minnesota Wild vs San Jose Sharks: Kaprizov’s league-leading 15 goals and a home record without a regulation loss
- 2 Minnesota Wild: 15 goals for Kaprizov, 2.14 goals against for Wallstedt
- 3 San Jose Sharks: 2.7 goals a game, a 7-7-1 record and four players out
- 4 Free NHL Prediction: Minnesota Wild vs San Jose Sharks
- 5 About our free predictions
- 6 No commitment from us
- 7 Information changes
- 8 Your responsibility
- 9 Responsible gambling
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Minnesota Wild vs San Jose Sharks: Kaprizov’s league-leading 15 goals and a home record without a regulation loss 
Minnesota is playing without Brock Faber, Jared Spurgeon and Filip Gustavsson, and it’s first in the Central Division anyway. Faber fractured his skull when a shot hit him in a preseason game on 25 September and has only just been cleared to skate. Spurgeon is out week-to-week. Gustavsson is still recovering from hip surgery.
The Wild are 10-3-3 and have points in five straight games, a run of 4-0-1 that ended in a 5-1 win in Washington on Sunday. They host San Jose at Grand Casino Arena on Friday 6 November, puck drop 8:00pm ET.
The Sharks are 7-7-1 and fourth in the Pacific with 15 points. They’ve gone 4-5-1 over their last 10, and their most recent game before this week was a 5-1 loss to Ottawa at SAP Center on 31 October.
The difference between these teams shows up most clearly in goal prevention. Minnesota allows 2.3 goals a game, third in the league, and San Jose allows 3.1, 20th. San Jose scores 2.7 a game, which ranks 26th, against 3.3 for the Wild.
Minnesota hadn’t lost in regulation at home through its first five games there, going 4-0-1. The one blemish was a 4-3 defeat to the New York Islanders on 29 October. The schedule also favors the hosts: the Sharks play the Flames on Monday and the Kings on Wednesday, and they go to Dallas the night after this game.
The Wild do have a road game of their own in Philadelphia on Tuesday, but they’ll be home with two full days to prepare.
Minnesota Wild: 15 goals for Kaprizov, 2.14 goals against for Wallstedt 
Kirill Kaprizov has 15 goals and 25 points, and his empty-netter on Sunday was both his league-leading 15th of the season and the 500th point of his career. Only one other player in franchise history has reached that mark. He has eight points in his current five-game streak.
Quinn Hughes has given this team a different look from the blue line, with 16 assists to go with his first-period goal in Washington. Matt Boldy and Joel Eriksson Ek sit behind him, and Eriksson Ek had two assists on Sunday. Maksim Shabanov and Danila Yurov also scored in the third period, which pulled the game away from a 2-1 score.
Jesper Wallstedt has been the steadiest piece of the season. He went 8-2-3 with a 2.14 goals-against average and a .916 save percentage across his first 13 starts, then stopped 26 of 27 in Washington. Calvin Pickard has started twice and has an .833 save percentage, so we’d expect Wallstedt to start this one.
The power play has clicked at 25.5% and the penalty kill at 80.9%. Those numbers matter against San Jose, which takes 4.1 penalties a game, the seventh-most in the league.
The depth has been tested. David Spacek came into the lineup when Spurgeon went down, and Marcus Foligno and Nick Foligno are both on the injury list. Spurgeon had played 10 games with a goal and four assists before he blocked two shots on one shift against Utah on 27 October.
Minnesota has still given up one goal in three of its last five games, against Seattle, Utah and Washington. No team in the Central has a better record.
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San Jose Sharks: 2.7 goals a game, a 7-7-1 record and four players out 
Macklin Celebrini had 115 points last season and has four goals and six assists over his last 10 games. He scored twice in the 4-3 overtime win in Montreal on 20 October, and he missed two games earlier in October with a lower-body injury. He wasn’t on the injury report going into the Calgary game.
Behind him the scoring has been spread thin. Will Smith has six goals and four assists, Tyler Toffoli has four goals and five assists over the last 10 games, and Michael Misa scored in the loss to Ottawa.
The Sharks can look very different from one night to the next. They beat Ottawa 6-2 on 22 October, then lost 6-4 in Boston, 2-0 to Buffalo and 5-1 to the same Senators, with a 3-2 win over Vancouver in between.
Goaltending is the question. Yaroslav Askarov was 2-4-0 with a 3.67 goals-against average and an .865 save percentage as of 22 October, and Alex Nedeljkovic stopped 30 of 34 in the Ottawa defeat. Neither line is what San Jose wants to carry into St. Paul against the league’s top goal-scorer.
The injury list runs through the forward group. Alexander Wennberg, who set career highs with 18 goals and 37 assists last season, is out with an upper-body injury alongside Igor Chernyshov and Quentin Musty, and goalie Kyle Keyser is also out.
San Jose is 3-4-0 at home, so most of its points have come on the road, including that win in Montreal. It averages 27.1 shots a game to Minnesota’s 30.8.
Probable lineup Minnesota Wild: Not announced at time of publication
Probable lineup San Jose Sharks: Not announced at time of publication
Free NHL Prediction: Minnesota Wild vs San Jose Sharks
Our prediction: Minnesota Wild to win
The Wild have the better goaltender, the league’s leading goal-scorer and a top-three defense, and they haven’t lost at home in regulation. San Jose ranks 26th in scoring and 20th in goals allowed, and it arrives in the middle of a run of games on the road.
Celebrini is the one player who can change this game by himself, and Minnesota’s blue line is short two of its best defensemen. We’ve weighed that, and a team that has kept winning without Faber and Spurgeon doesn’t give us much reason to fade it.
Lines hadn’t been posted at the time of writing. We’d take Minnesota on the moneyline at 1.50 or longer.
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