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Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds are subject to change.

NY Islanders +167 over Minnesota

8:00 PM EST. The home team tonight isn't really a home team yet. Minnesota hosts the Islanders tonight, but this is the Wild's first game in their own building in 11 days, at the end of a five-game road trip that dragged them through Edmonton, Calgary, Seattle, Vancouver and Salt Lake City — including a back-to-back on the weekend and a Tuesday night finish in Utah. First game back off a long western trip is one of the flattest spots in hockey: the bags, the family, the first night in your own bed, against a team that's been living in hotels all week and is already in road rhythm. That unbeaten 4-0 home record Minnesota is defending was built in mid-October, in a different life. 

The on-ice case stacks on top of it. The total is 5.5 because both teams defend: New York allows 2.58 goals a game (fifth in the league) with a sixth-ranked penalty kill (85.4 percent) built to survive Minnesota's power play, and Ilya Sorokin (5-3-0, 2.26, .919) is the best goalie in the game tonight with Filip Gustavsson (hip) on IR for Minnesota and top-pair defenceman Brock Faber (skull) out as well. The Islanders hold the league's second-best faceoff mark at 55.1 percent, they've already won on this trip — 4-3 in a shootout at Nashville on Tuesday — and this is the last stop before they go home, which is when road teams tend to play their tightest game. Bo Horvat (6 goals, 13 points) and rookie Matthew Schaefer are driving what offense New York has.

Minnesota went 3-2-0 on that trip and closed it with three straight wins, Kirill Kaprizov has 14 goals, Quinn Hughes tilts the ice at a 66.2 percent Corsi-for, and Jesper Wallstedt (.920) has made Gustavsson's absence nearly painless. The Islanders are travelling too — Dallas, Nashville, now St. Paul in five days — and they're doing it without Mathew Barzal (knee) and Alexander Romanov (ACL), with a 25th-ranked power play and a 2-3-1 road record. And a dose of humility on the angle itself: the same first-game-home spot was in the Boston piece on Tuesday and Carolina won anyway. Spurgeon and both Folignos may also return for Minnesota tonight, which the pre-game check will settle. But a trip-weary favourite, a 5.5 total, Sorokin in net, and plus a big number in your pocket,  that's the bet. See you at the window!

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