Columbus Blue Jackets vs. Minnesota Wild (-1.5) - Preview

The Minnesota Wild will head to Nationwide Arena to take on the Columbus Blue Jackets for the 3rd time this season after winning the first two with the same score of 4-2 (one on road and one at home). The Wild who are now 25-19-8 and 8th in the West keep hopes at a playoff spot, but still they have to pass this crysis they are in and in the last period I think they are in the right direction, winning 3 of 5. Unfortunately they will have Latendresse, Bouchard, Koivu and Palmer out for this one, while Stoner is questionable. On the other side Columbus, 14-32-6, bottom of the Western Conference with no real pretention at anything this season, coming after a surprising win in Anaheim against the Ducks by 3-2 in overtime which snapped a not surprisng 6-game losing streak.  Wisniewski, Letestu, Nikitin, Huselius, Martinek and Lebda will miss this one for the Jackets. The Wild need points and they are on the right track at the moment rounding up some in 4 of their last 5 games. With Koivu out of the line-up another leader has stepped up to help Minnesota, left wing Dany Heatley (17+21=38) who has played a role in these last 5 games in which he scored 4 goals and had another 4 assists. Minnesota is in the position right now in which they were at the start of the season  where they were "roaring" with a very nice 17-4-0 period in which they also were missing some key players from the line-up. The Jackers are once again set with another long list of injuries, heading back home where they are 2nd worst (6-19-3, 56:64) in the league, with the weekest offense, losing 6 of their last 8. My pick in this meeting will be for the Minnesota Wild to win it by 2 or more goals counting the fact that they are a good team on road (12-12-5, 57:73), winning 2 of their last 3 games on foreign ground  facing one of the weekest team overall in the league. Last but not least the Wild are better then the Jackets in mosty all important categories, offense, deffense, powerplay and penalty kill.