The word from the American Airlines Center after morning skate today is that Krys Barch and Nicklas Grossman will make their first appearances for the Dallas Stars this season tonight against the Blues.
Grossman has been dealing with a sore groin since October 3rd or 4th and missed the first three games while fellow defenseman Adam Pardy is still healing his cracked rib suffered against these same Blues on the last day of the preseason. Gulutzan says Pardy will probably be available on Saturday, and at that point Philip Larsen will re-join the Texas Stars in Cedar Park.
Lines from morning skate looked like this:
Morrow-Ribeiro-Ryder
Ott-Benn-Eriksson
Burish-Fiddler-Dvorak
Barch-Dowell-Petersen
Goligoski-Fistric
Grossman-Daley
Souray-Robidas
Those defensive pairings are a little different than what we expected so we'll keep an eye on that moving forward. They are in line with the "a big guy with a mobile guy" way of thinking. We expect that Goligoski/Robidas and Souray/Daley will still be the defensive pairings out on the power play units.
Gulutzan was asked about the power play struggles of the first three games and had this to say.
"To say 'we need to revamp, we need to start over, it's not working' after one bad outing is not realistic. I told the guys that if we're still here [continued lack of success] on game 8 or 10 then we'll revisit it, otherwise we're just going to keep going. We had great success in the preseason with it and we just need to keep going."
So the emphasis on improving it will be, as we discussed, on greater work ethic and winning puck battles.