Dallas Stars Must Crack St. Louis Blues For Central Division Success
By Josh Clark
The Dallas Stars and St. Louis Blues are reconvening for the second time this year tonight at the Scottrade Center. It’s going to be yet another test of the Stars’ ability to fight adversity and go toe-to-toe with one of the best.
Tonight is a new chance for the Dallas Stars to return to their winning ways and fend off one of the best teams in the Central. Ken Hitchcock is in St. Louis to face his former team as the Stars take on the St. Louis Blues.
It will be the second matchup of the season between these two clubs. The Blues capitalized in the first meeting, winning their home opener 4-2 over the Stars. Dallas struggled to find any consistency just 24 hours after dropping their home opener to Vegas. St. Louis scored three goals in the first period against Kari Lehtonen and the Stars were never able to come back from the deficit.
Lehtonen will get the start tonight while starter Ben Bishop nurses a sore back. No. 32 has a .900 save percentage and 2.80 goals against average on the season. While his numbers are not stellar, he has shown up in critical moments and played well while adapting to the backup role.
This is also Hitchcock’s second time coaching against his former team. Hitchcock coached the Blues for the past six seasons before being let go in February 2017. He’ll be looking for a different result this time around.
Dallas Stars
There are plenty of storylines to follow in tonight’s game, but the central theme is the Stars’ need to get back to their winning ways.
On Tuesday night, the Dallas Stars had a season high five-game win streak cut at the hands of the Nashville Predators. The Preds beat Dallas 5-2 and bumped them off of their hot streak. Nashville scored at even strength, on the power play, and on the penalty kill on their way to five goals. The Stars, on the other hand, struggled to find offensive pressure and were forced to change goalies midway through the game.
Tonight, they have a new opportunity to jump back in the win column, but it isn’t going to be easy. The Blues are 18-8-2 on the season and sit in a tie for second place in the Central Division. They are one point back of first, where they had been sitting for the past few weeks. St. Louis has lost three of their past four contests, with a win on Tuesday against Montreal breaking the three-game skid.
The Stars are 16-11-1 with 33 points and are three wins out of first place. That’s a good place to be for a team that started the season off on a .500 note. But things are still airtight in the standings, and one or two losses could effectively kick the Stars out of the playoff picture.
It will be up to Dallas to rally back from a disappointing loss and contest with one of the top teams in the NHL. While the Stars’ record both on the road and against the Central Division is on the uptick, their record against top three teams in the division is ugly. The Stars are a humbling 0-5-0 against the Central’s top three groups (Nashville, Winnipeg, and St. Louis).
Consistency and a new level of effort will be necessary if the Stars want to win tonight’s game. The Blues are looking to get a win streak of their own started to balance out the recent skid, so Dallas will need to come out with a lot of energy and focus.
If the Stars can jump ahead early and play their regular style, it just might be enough to lift them to victory.
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But we’ll have to wait and see. The lineup might look a tad bit different tonight, but it’s on the Stars to adapt properly and come away with the win. Puck drop is scheduled for 7:00 p.m. from St. Louis.