Wild vs Flames Best Pick, Prediction and Odds

Bet the Flames at +170. With Filip Gustavsson out, our number is run on Minnesota’s road games without him, and it makes Calgary a 51.6% winner at home against the price’s 35.5%.

The Calgary Flames are +170 and the Minnesota Wild -205 at DraftKings. With the margin out, that is 35.5% for Calgary and 64.5% for Minnesota. The price has the visitors as a heavy favourite. Our number has this close to even, with the Flames slightly ahead.

How 51.6% is reached

Our home win chance is the average of two 2025-26 rates: the home team’s win rate in its own arena and the visitor’s loss rate on the road. Overtime and shootout wins count as wins. Neither team played a game at a neutral site.

Gustavsson is on injured reserve with a hip injury (ESPN injury list, read 22 October 2026, 14:10 UTC; listed since Sunday, 19 November given as his expected return). When a team’s starting goalie is out, our method is run again on the games without him. Gustavsson appeared in 50 of Minnesota’s 82 games last season, more than Jesper Wallstedt’s 35. In the 17 road games he did not play, all with Wallstedt in goal, the Wild went 9-4-4: 4 regulation losses and 4 after regulation, so 8 losses in 17, a 47.1% road loss rate, scoring 53 goals and allowing 44. In the 24 he played, they went 14-10-0.

The Flames went 23-13-5 at Scotiabank Saddledome, a 56.1% home win rate over 41 games. Average 56.1% with 47.1% and the Flames are 51.6%, the Wild 48.4%. That is 16.1 points better for Calgary than the price.

The full road season gives the same side. The Wild went 23-14-4 away from home, 18 losses in 41, a 43.9% road loss rate; on that number Calgary is 50.0% and the gap is 14.5 points. Taking Gustavsson out makes Minnesota weaker on the road, and the gap wider.

The margin is the extra a book builds into both prices so the pair comes to more than 100%. At +170 and -205 they come to 104.3%. Taken out, the Flames are 35.5% and the Wild 64.5%.

Every input is from 2025-26: Calgary’s 41 home games and Minnesota’s 17 road games without Gustavsson. This season is not in the figures, and it has gone badly for Calgary. The Flames are 2-6-0, 1-3-0 at home, though they beat Carolina 3-2 at home on Sunday. Dustin Wolf has played five of their games and Devin Cooley three. The Wild are 6-2-2, 2-2-2 on the road, and lost 4-3 in overtime in Edmonton on Tuesday. Wallstedt has played nine of their games and Calvin Pickard one.

Calgary at home, Minnesota on the road

Over the full season the Flames at home scored 2.93 a game and allowed 2.61, a surplus of 0.32. The Wild on the road scored 3.46 and allowed 3.05, a surplus of 0.41. In the 17 road games without Gustavsson they scored 53 and allowed 44.

The halves the method leaves out: Calgary on the road went 11-26-4, a 26.8% win rate, scoring 2.24 and allowing 3.71. Minnesota at home went 23-10-8, 56.1%, scoring 3.17 and allowing 2.80. The Flames were a different team away from their own arena, and that half is not in our number.

Over the full season these two finished 27 points apart. Minnesota went 46-24-12 with 104 points and outscored opponents by 32, then beat Dallas 4-2 in the playoffs before losing 4-1 to Colorado. Calgary went 34-39-9 with 77 points, was outscored by 47, and missed the playoffs.

The Wild were good in close games. They went 20-5-12 in one-goal games and won 15 of the 27 that went past regulation. Calgary went 14-6-9 in one-goal games and won 7 of its 16 past 60 minutes. The Flames lost by two goals or more in 33 of 82 games.

Minnesota won two of the three meetings in 2025-26, both at home: 2-0 on 9 November and 4-1 on 29 January. Those are in neither half of our number. The one game in Calgary, a 4-1 Flames win on 4 December with Gustavsson in goal for Minnesota, is in the full-season road half but not in the re-run.

Pick: Flames +170

Bet the Flames on the moneyline at +170. The gap is 16.1 points toward Calgary on Minnesota’s road games without Gustavsson, against a threshold of 5, and 14.5 on the full road season.

The line read Flames +170 and Wild -205 on 22 October 2026 at 14:08 UTC, DraftKings via ESPN. It opened at +150 and -180.

What kills the bet

A shorter Calgary price. At +115 or longer the Flames are a bet whatever Minnesota is priced at; against Minnesota at -205, they stay a bet down to -142.

For the Wild to become the bet, they would have to be +131 or longer. They are -205.

The rest is on the ice. Calgary’s start to this season is poor, and none of it is in our number. Besides Gustavsson, ESPN’s injury list has Olli Maatta out, and Jared Spurgeon, Marcus Foligno and Nick Foligno on injured reserve for Minnesota. Calgary lists Mikael Backlund as day-to-day with an upper-body injury, and Samuel Honzek and Jonathan Huberdeau on injured reserve. No other goalie is on either list. Check the lineups before you bet.

The total and the puck line

The total is 5.5, over -135 and under +114. The Flames’ games went over 5.5 in 43 of 82, the Wild’s in 50 of 82. Calgary’s home games averaged 5.54 goals, Minnesota’s road games 6.51.

That is 52.4% and 61.0%, an average of 56.7% for the over. With the margin removed the over is priced at 55.1% and the under at 44.9%, so our number leans to the over by 1.6 points. Pass on the total.

On the puck line, Calgary is +1.5 at -155 and Minnesota -1.5 at +130, which is 58.3% and 41.7% without the margin. Over the full season the Wild won by two goals or more in 26 of 82 games, and the Flames lost by two or more in 33 of 82. Averaged, Wild -1.5 lands 36.0% of the time against 41.7% priced, a gap of 5.7 points toward Flames +1.5 at -155. Our method stakes the moneyline only, so this is a lean, on the same side. One bet on this game: the Flames at +170.

Wild at Flames, Thursday 22 October, 9:00 PM ET, Scotiabank Saddledome. Prices: DraftKings via ESPN, read 22 October 2026, 14:08 UTC. Results: ESPN, 2025-26 regular season and playoffs; Minnesota’s goalie appearances from ESPN box scores, read 19 October 2026. Injury list, 2026-27 records and goalie appearances this season: ESPN’s game page, read 22 October 2026, 14:10 UTC.