Dallas Stars: Injuries Continue to Pile Up With Ben Bishop Out for a Week
By Summer LeBel
The Dallas Stars need to figure out who broke a mirror or crossed paths with a black cat on Halloween, because their bad luck streak of injuries just got worse.
Ben Bishop is the latest in a frighteningly long line of injuries for the Dallas Stars, with their starting goaltender leaving the game last night against the Rangers during the second intermission.
The Stars eventually lost last night, though Anton Khudobin played fine and it was more the fault of a lacking offense.
They can handle losing a game or two. What they probably can’t handle is another injury to this team’s already decimated roster.
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Bishop will likely be out a week or so, but hopefully that doesn’t turn into something longer. Khudobin has played very well as a back-up, but Landon Bow is another story and the Stars are in the middle of five games in seven days.
It could certainly be a worse prognosis, but after the initial call was day-to-day, the estimate of a week hurts when looking at what’s coming up in the next week. If he was potentially going to be back for this weekend, that’s a huge difference.
The decision to start Bishop yesterday was already questionable considering the schedule and that it was the second night of a back-to-back, but this makes that decision look even worse in hindsight.
At least for now, Bishop has a timeline. That’s better than Stephen Johns, who has definitely been missed on the defensive end and has no timeline at all for returning. Marc Methot‘s return is also still up in the air at this point, but his should be sooner than Johns’ return. There’s also Martin Hanzal, who is recovering from back surgery that ended his season last year, and while there’s a rough timeline, it’s hard to predict.
Connor Carrick, John Klingberg, and Devin Shore are all a little more concrete in projected return dates for now, but things can always change during recovery. Shore will likely be the first player back from injury, and he could be back Friday or Saturday. Carrick and Klingberg still have a few more weeks, and the team could desperately use them on defense with Bishop out and Bow stepping in.
The roughest part of this injury is what it means for the pair of games this weekend. It was already going to be a difficult stretch, as the Stars play at home on Friday and then have to travel to Denver on Saturday for the last day of what is arguably their roughest stretch all season. Now, Jim Montgomery has to decide how he wants to handle the goaltending for those games to try and salvage as many points out of this stretch of injuries as possible.
Next. Looking Ahead at the Rough Next Two Weeks on the Schedule. dark
Stars fans have had a rough ride for the past month with injuries, and there doesn’t appear to be an end in sight. Now, they just need to worry about how to stop any more major ones from happening.