NHL
NHL · Tuesday 20 October
Jets vs Blues Best Pick, Prediction and Odds
No bet on the Jets at +124. Connor Hellebuyck is out, and on the road games Winnipeg played without him our number gives the Jets 44.8% against the price’s 42.8%: a 2-point gap, short of the 5 a bet needs.
The St. Louis Blues are -148 and the Winnipeg Jets +124 at DraftKings. With the margin out, that is 57.2% for St. Louis and 42.8% for Winnipeg. Our number has the Blues as the favourite too, by a little less.
How 55.2% 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.
Hellebuyck is on injured reserve (ESPN injury list, read 19 October 2026, 22:15 UTC; listed since 2 October, with 25 October as his expected return), and when a team’s starting goalie is out, our method is run again on the games without him. He played in 57 of the Jets’ 82 games last season. In the 13 road games he did not play, Winnipeg went 5-7-1 and lost 8, a 61.5% road loss rate, scoring 36 goals and allowing 47. In the 28 road games he played, they went 11-12-5.
The Blues went 20-14-7 at Enterprise Center, a 48.8% home win rate. Average 48.8% with 61.5% and the Blues are 55.2%, the Jets 44.8%.
The full road season gives almost the same answer. The Jets went 16-19-6 away and lost 25 of 41, a 61.0% road loss rate; on that number St. Louis is 54.9% and the gap is 2.3 points. Either way it is a pass.
The margin is the extra a book builds into both prices so the pair comes to more than 100%. At -148 and +124 they come to 104.3%. Taken out, the Blues are 57.2% and the Jets 42.8%.
Every input is from 2025-26: the Blues’ 41 home games and Winnipeg’s 13 road games without Hellebuyck. This season is not in the figures. Stuart Skinner has played five of the Jets’ eight games and Clay Stevenson three, and Winnipeg is 4-2-2. They lost 3-2 at home to Carolina on Saturday. The Blues are 3-4-1, 1-0-1 at home, and lost 5-2 in Nashville on Saturday.
St. Louis at home, Winnipeg on the road
Over the full season the Blues at home scored 2.83 a game and allowed 3.07, a deficit of 0.24. The Jets on the road scored 2.61 and allowed 3.24, a deficit of 0.63.
The halves the method leaves out: St. Louis on the road went 17-19-5, a 41.5% win rate, scoring 2.80 and allowing 3.22. Winnipeg at home went 19-16-6, 46.3%, scoring 3.02 and allowing 3.10.
Over the full season these two finished 4 points apart. The Blues went 37-33-12 with 86 points and were outscored by 27. The Jets went 35-35-12 with 82 points and were outscored by 29. Neither made the playoffs.
St. Louis went 18-9-12 in one-goal games but won only 4 of the 16 that went past regulation. Winnipeg went 16-12-12 in one-goal games and won 7 of its 19 past 60 minutes.
The Jets won three of the four meetings in 2025-26. The two in St. Louis, a 1-0 Blues win on 17 December and a 3-2 Jets win on 9 April, are in the Blues’ home half; Hellebuyck played both, so neither is in the Jets’ re-run. The two in Winnipeg, 3-1 on 20 January and 3-2 on 15 March, both Jets wins, are in neither half.
Pick: No bet on the Jets +124
Pass on the moneyline. The gap is 2.0 points toward Winnipeg on the games without Hellebuyck, against a threshold of 5.
The line read Blues -148 and Jets +124 on 19 October 2026 at 22:14 UTC, DraftKings via ESPN. It opened at -142 and +120.
What changes it
A longer Winnipeg price. Against St. Louis at -148, the Jets would need to be +153 or longer to clear the bar.
For St. Louis to become the bet, the market would have to drop the Blues to 50.2% or less, from 57.2% now.
The lineups are the rest of it. Besides Hellebuyck, ESPN’s injury list has Josh Morrissey on injured reserve since Monday with a wrist injury, Vladislav Namestnikov out and Garrett Brown on injured reserve for Winnipeg. St. Louis has Ross Johnston, Torey Krug, Dillon Dube, Alexey Toropchenko and Tyler Tucker on injured reserve. No other goalie is on either list. Joel Hofer has played five of the Blues’ eight games and Jordan Binnington three. Check the starters before you bet.
The total and the puck line
The total is 5.5, over -120 and under +100. The Blues’ games went over 5.5 in 39 of 82, the Jets’ in 47 of 82. St. Louis’s home games averaged 5.90 goals, Winnipeg’s road games 5.85.
That is 47.6% and 57.3%, an average of 52.4% for the over. With the margin removed the over is priced at 52.2% and the under at 47.8%, so our number and the price are less than a point apart. Pass on the total.
The puck line is where the figures part from the price. St. Louis is -1.5 at +170 and Winnipeg +1.5 at -205, which is 35.5% and 64.5% without the margin. Over the full season the Blues won by two goals or more in 19 of 82 games, and the Jets lost by two or more in 23 of 82. Averaged, Blues -1.5 lands 25.6% of the time against 35.5% priced, a gap of 9.9 points toward Jets +1.5 at -205. Our method bets the moneyline only, so this is a lean. The call on the game stays no bet.
Jets at Blues, Tuesday 20 October, 8:00 PM ET, Enterprise Center. Prices: DraftKings via ESPN, read 19 October 2026, 22:14 UTC. Results: ESPN, 2025-26 regular season; goalie appearances from ESPN box scores; 2026-27 games and goalie appearances from ESPN’s team schedules and game page, read 19 October 2026. Injury list: ESPN, read 19 October 2026, 22:15 UTC.