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Dallas Stars Daily Links: Captain Center

Jamie Benn is back at center, and the new line has shown promising results thus far. Plus, Oettinger’s shining in the NHL, New Jersey has a new JERSEY, and more.

After all the offseason talk of moving Jamie Benn back to Center, the Dallas Stars began their season with the captain back at Left Wing.

Cue one awful start to the season, and the experiment is back on, with Denis Gurianov and Michael Raffl as his wingers. And so far, results have been promising:

“They’re big and they’re protecting the puck and they’re generating offense,” Bowness said.

“They’re all physical,” he added. “We tried to get everybody more involved physically tonight. We didn’t like our physical play in Minnesota and the guys responded to that tonight and I thought everyone was involved physically.”

Both Gurianov and Raffl have seen an uptick in their game with this new line, which is especially important for the former. But make no mistake — Benn is the straw that stirs the drink:

“We just try to keep it simple,” [Raffl] said. “That goes back to [Benn], he wants to play like that. He’s a really good player. I’ve played with good players before and he lets me play my style and he just jumps on pucks and is hard on the forecheck and is very responsible in our end.”

You can read more from Mike Heika here.

Stars Stories

Jake Oettinger is making his case to stay in the NHL, creating quite the goalie logjam:

Could his next opportunity come tonight against Connor McDavid and the Edmonton Oilers?

Around the League

Last night was a good one for the Central Division:

  • The St. Louis Blues pounded the Vegas Golden Knights to the ice 5-2. [Knights on Ice]
  • Meanwhile the Nashville Predators squeezed out the victory over the Anaheim Ducks, winning 3-2. [On the Forecheck]
  • Rumor has it goalies still have nightmares about the Colorado Avalanche’s 7-5 win over the Ottawa Senators. [Mile High Hockey]
  • The Winnipeg Jets couldn’t keep the streak up, unfortunately, falling 3-1 to the Pittsburgh Penguins. [Pensburgh]/

There’s apparently a lot of clones in Wonderland — Dom Luszczyszyn take his model down the rabbit hole:

The New Jersey Devils have a new third JERSEY:

The New York Islanders have finally begun play in their new stadium, which is clearly not short on drinks:

With many statistics missing from women’s hockey, Mike Murphy has taken it upon himself to fill in the gaps:

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