The Seattle Kraken and Vegas Golden Knights — the NHL’s two newest franchises — will meet within the 2024 Winter Classic at T-Mobile Park in Seattle, Wash. on Monday afternoon.
The Winter Classic is at all times a game that gets circled on the calendar, but this iteration carries significant stakes for each teams because the Golden Knights are within the thick of the race for the Pacific Division and Presidents’ Trophy, while the Kraken are scrapping for a playoff position.
The defending champion Golden Knights are a -135 road favorite on the time of writing.
The Over/Under is currently sitting at 6.
Golden Knights vs. Kraken prediction
The Golden Knights looked as if it would put any worries of a Stanley Cup hangover to bed with a red-hot begin to the season, but results have been hard to come back by for the Knights as of late.
Vegas halted a five-game losing streak with a formidable win over the Los Angeles Kings on Thursday and is just 8-6-3 since Thanksgiving.
Seattle has taken a more perilous path to the Winter Classic.
The Kraken turned heads with a surprising run to the second round of the playoffs last spring, but that momentum sputtered at first of 2023-24.
Seattle’s goaltending struggled out of the gate and the Kraken’s scoring stats got here down in an enormous way, which wasn’t an enormous shock to the group that predicted some negative regression for Seattle after it shot the lights out last season.
The Kraken have found their best type of the season of late, though, and can come into the Winter Classic riding a 6-1-3 run.
Seattle’s statistical profile suggests that this run has been well-earned because the Kraken rank second in high-danger scoring probability rate, eleventh in expected goals percentage and second in 5-on-5 goal difference over their last 10 contests.
Betting on the NHL?
Each of those teams are able to playing grind-it-out, low-event hockey and that’s what I expect we’ll see on Monday.
I doubt either side will give you the chance to run away with this contest and that makes backing the 60-minute draw (or the sport to go to extra time) an appealing bet at +350.
The Bet: 60-minute draw (+350, DraftKings)