Wild vs. Penguins prediction: NHL odds, picks, best bets Monday

We’re getting close to panic time for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

Pittsburgh was blown out, 7-0, in Toronto on Saturday night and now finds itself five points out of a playoff position 30 games into the season.

There’s still plenty of runway left for the Pens to get back into the mix, but there are no fundamental indicators that show this NHL team is on the cusp of turning things around.

The Pens are struggling defensively, they’re getting no help from their bottom-six and there’s a lot of noise surrounding head coach Mike Sullivan.

Pittsburgh is a -125 home favorite over the Minnesota Wild on Monday night.

(7 p.m. ET)

The Penguins missed the playoffs for the first time in 16 years in 2022-23, and the organization made sweeping changes in the offseason to ensure they’d bounce right back this season.

Unfortunately, a lot of Pittsburgh’s problems from the last campaign are still an issue through the first third of 2023-24.

While the Pens are getting much more consistent goaltending, the defense has still been leaky and Pittsburgh is getting very little from its bottom-six.

That means that the Penguins are overly reliant on Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang and Jake Guentzel to provide enough scoring to make up for their many flaws.

There are times when that approach will work, but against stronger opposition it becomes a lot less viable and that’s why Pittsburgh has lost five of seven and 10 of its last 15 (5-7-3).

The Wild may be missing some key players, but their team game is in much better shape compared to Pittsburgh right now.

Minnesota is 7-2-0 under new head coach John Hynes, and the team’s hallmark defensive play has returned under the new bench boss.

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Meanwhile, the Pens just allowed 11 rush chances in their ugly loss to the Maple Leafs and have now surrendered 10 or more chances on the rush five times in their last 12 games, per SportLogiq’s Mike Kelly.

Minnesota’s defensive form will make life quite difficult on the top-heavy Penguins, who seemingly need to put up a crooked number in order to have any chance of winning games right now.

That just isn’t the recipe for success needed to beat stingy Minnesota.

The Bet: Minnesota Wild (+102, BetRivers) — Bet to +100 or better