Bet on the Wild as slight underdogs against Penguins on Monday night

It’s getting close to panic time for the Pittsburgh Penguins.

The Pens were blown out, 7-0, in Toronto on Saturday night to fall five points out of a playoff position. It was the fifth loss for the Penguins in their last seven contests and their 10th in their last 15 (5-7-3). What’s more concerning is that Pittsburgh’s problems are not new and don’t seem to be the sort of thing you can easily fix.

The Penguins are -129 home favorites over the Minnesota Wild on Monday night at the time of writing.

The Penguins had a disappointing 2022-23 season and missed the playoffs for the first time in 16 years because of a lack of depth, inconsistent goaltending and a defense that couldn’t avoid making critical mistakes. While the goaltending has generally been strong for the Pens this campaign, the other two issues remain and arguably have gotten worse.

Injuries have certainly impacted the Penguins, but almost every team is banged up at this time of the year and the only true impact player that is on the shelf for the Pens is Bryan Rust. The issue is that so much of Pittsburgh’s salary cap is tied up in its big stars that it makes finding effective role players pretty tough. That means the Penguins have had to adopt a plug-and-play tactic down their roster and things aren’t working out well.

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With very little help coming from the bottom-six and a leaky defense, the pressure has been ramped up on Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Jake Guentzel, Erik Karlsson and Kris Letang to provide enough scoring to make up for Pittsburgh’s flaws. Some nights it’s worked out -- Crosby, Guentzel and Karlsson have been notably impressive -- but that’s not a recipe for success, especially against stronger opposition.

The Wild are also banged up, but Minnesota’s team game is in a much better place compared to Pittsburgh’s right now. The Wild are 7-2-0 since firing Dean Evason and replacing him with John Hynes and the club’s defensive form has been exquisite under their new head coach.

The Penguins, meanwhile, allowed 11 rush chances to the Maple Leafs on Saturday night and have now conceded 10 or more chances on the rush five times in their last 12, per SportLogiq’s Mike Kelly.

Pittsburgh needs to outscore its problems at the moment and the Wild are not the kind of team that allows you to do that. Monday night projects to be tough sledding for the struggling Penguins and I like the visitors at plus-money.

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