If this were the regular season, this is where one would write that the Dallas Stars are trying to bounce back from a bad loss and a worse second period Friday night against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
But since it’s still the preseason, tonight’s Stars game against the St. Louis Blues at the Sprint Center in Kansas City is its own stand-alone opportunity for young players to make an impression and veterans to build chemistry that will serve them once the real business comes around in a few weeks.
This is the only of the Stars six preseason games that are not expected to be streamed online, and the Blues primary radio station KMOX is not carrying it either. Twitter is going to be your best bet for updates, or if you want to go really old-school, you can go to the NHL game sheets and watch the every-two-minute auto-refresh updates. That’s how we did it in the good old days when we walked uphill both ways in the snow to get our hockey.
Given the lineup that lost at Tampa on Friday, here are the players one could reasonably expect, a very similar lineup to the group that defeated the Florida Panthers in a shootout earlier this week:
Jamie Benn-Tyler Seguin-Ryan Garbutt
Curtis McKenzie-Travis Morin-Patrick Eaves
Erik Cole-Radek Faksa-Matej Stransky
Gemel Smith-Justin Dowling-Ales Hemsky
Alex Goligoski-Kevin Connauton
Jamie Oleksiak-Jyrki Jokipakka
Cameron Gaunce-Maxime Fortunus
Antoine Roussel would be another option, since he didn’t head to Tampa with that group, and there are still a few youngesters who have not gotten into a preseason game yet. Either way, the lineup will likely be much more veteran-heavy at forward than the relatively green team that lost to the Lightning.
(Yes, that was a terrible pun. I couldn’t help it. That’s why Brad usually writes these things and not me.)
This is the fourth preseason game for the Stars, and it would seem to be about the time to cut down the roster by sending junior and minor league players back to their usual teams.
However, this is also the second of four games in five days, as the Stars close out the preseason at home with games Monday and Tuesday at the American Airlines Center. So they may keep the whole mess of players around for the duration of the preseason games and only make their major cut before the scrimmage in Austin.
The Blues lineup is more set at this point, courtesy of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Ott-Berglund-Rattie
Fabbri-Stastny-Oshie
Porter-Jaskin-Lapierre
McCarthy-McRae-Reaves
Leopold-Regner
Bouwmeester-Shattenkirk
Lindbohm-Cole
Allen
Binnington
That’s right, it could be Steve Ott-Curtis McKenzie part deux. Be sure to set your Twitter feeds to intrigue.