Dallas Stars Can Bounce Back Against Eastern Conference

The Dallas Stars have, at first glance, a less formidable opponent to face as they seal up their homestand and employ a different approach to win.

The Stars’ play tonight will center around one thing: preventing a repeat of Monday. Winnipeg at home was a tough game to lose mentally, but physically also as it resulted in the injury of multiple players.

So with Radek Faksa, Tyler Pitlick, Brett Ritchie, and Marc Methot all grounded for the time being, how do the Stars get back to that depth scoring that had th flying high just before all of this awful losing nonsense?

Hitch’s response has been to shuffle the lines in practice, and likely also in performance. With a perceived lack of effort from all lines, Hitch will likely be splitting the top line in order to spread out his most involved players for maximum impact.

This is a great tactic not only to combat the empty holes left by injury, but to attempt a strong bounce-back against the Islanders to round out the Stars’ homestand on a good note.

This story will sound familiar: although Dallas has struggled to triumph over its own conference rivals, its record against the East is a perfect 3-0-0 so far.

But check that information with this: despite coming off a disappointing loss, the Islanders are more or less riding a hot streak that has them sitting on top of NHL scoring. Historically, the Stars haven’t fared too well against them either, dropping 6 of their last 8 meetings.

Next: Injury Bug Could Force Stars To Call Up Forward

But we’ve yet to see a Hitch-mandated game-long first line break-up in response to undesirable game results. Even though it’s still early in the season, a lot is riding on this game and it will speak volumes about the Stars’ ability (or lack thereof) to shake off failure and keep pressing on.