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Stars Recall Landon Bow After Ben Bishop Injury Last Night

The Dallas Stars announced this morning that goaltender Landon Bow has been recalled from their AHL affiliate, the Texas Stars. It’s not a move that is surprising in the least considering what transpired last night.

On a play that was seemingly routine, Ben Bishop moved across his crease. Shortly after the non-contact play, he left the game with what is being called a day-to-day lower body injury. Here’s where he’s in obvious discomfort on the play during the second period of the Stars’ win over the Calgary Flames last night:

Antoin Khudobin came in and backstopped the team to the win in clean-up duty. With Bishop highly unlikely to be able to go tonight after the injury, the move to recall Bow was just a matter of time.

This will be his second such stint at the NHL level in the past two weeks. Bishop pulled himself from the Stars’ win over the Minnesota Wild roughly two weeks ago while he was in the midst of attempting to go four straight games with a shutout and in the middle of a record-setting consecutive minutes played without allowing a goal, both for the Stars franchise and the league.

Bishop missed two games after his last injury that was called “day-to-day”. There’s not going to be any real clarity on what the exact nature of Bishop’s injury is at this time of year, especially with the team in the midst of a playoff push to punch their ticket to the post season.

Luckily for Dallas, Khudobin is more than capable of a few starts while Bishop rehabs this latest injury. He’s sporting a very respectable .924 save percentage this season, has set a career-high in games played, and has a fairly sparkling 2.53 goals against average. His record this season does not reflect the quality of work he’s put in behind the Stars this season, and a lot of that has to do with not getting much in the way of goal scoring support in front of him. Khudobin has lost 15 games this season, and in seven of those he allowed two goals or less against.

That should get him more wins than losses on a normal basis, but when the team in front struggles to score in general, the backup goaltender’s record often is the one that seems to suffer the most.

Dallas takes on the Edmonton Oilers tonight, and Khudobin is the expected starter. Hopefully the team can find more than two goals a night to help the guy out while Bishop gets back to healthy.

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