What a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday I was talking about how the Dallas Stars were seven points out of the playoffs with three games in hand against the Nashville Predators. Fast forward 24 hours. Thanks to a dominating win over the Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning shutting out the Predators, Dallas is now five points out of the playoffs with three games in hand.
If you couple all of that with the fact that Dallas is playing Nashville tonight, you have a huge hockey game in the middle of April. Perhaps now is a good time to point out the offensive production from the last couple of games. Dallas has put up nine goals in the last two games. After scoring five against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday, the offense put up four more on Saturday. This includes two goals in the first two minutes of the game. A third of those goals came from Jason Robertson.
Potential Dallas Stars Lines
Jason Robertson (21) – Roope Hintz (24) – Joe Pavelski (16)
Tanner Kero (64) – Jamie Benn (14) – Denis Gurianov (34)
Andrew Cogliano (11) – Radek Faksa (12) – Blake Comeau (15)
Rhett Gardner (49) – Ty Dellandrea (10) – Joel L’Esperance (38)
Esa Lindell (23) – John Klingberg (3)
Jamie Oleksiak (2) – Miro Heiskanen (4)
Andrej Sekera (5) – Mark Pysyk (13)
Anton Khudobin (35)
Jake Oettinger (29)
The Nashville Predators
Since the last time these two teams played, the Predators have gone 3-1. In their three wins they scored 12 goals. Their only blemish on the record was last night’s 3-0 loss to the defending Stanley Cup Champions.
The recent offensive production is kind of an anomaly for Nashville this year. The Predators are ranked 25th in the league in offense this year with 2.56 goals per game. Both of these teams like to play defense first and score second. Anytime Dallas and Nashville get together, there’s a possibility of a low-scoring shutout from one of these teams.
Potential Nashville Predators Lines
Rocco Grimaldi (23) – Ryan Johansen (92) – Victor Arvidsson (33)
Calle Jarnkrok (19) – Mikael Granlund (64) – Luke Kunin (11)
Rem Pitlick (16) – Erik Haula (56) – Nick Cousins (21)
Yakov Trenin (13) – Colton Sissons (10) – Michael McCarron (47)
Josi Roman (59) – Matthew Benning (5)
Mattias Elkholm (14) – Ryan Ellis (4)
Jeremy Davies (38) – Ben Harpur (17)
Pekka Rinne (35)
Juuse Saros (74)