Stars Face Oilers Tonight with Memories of Injuries Past and Present

This matchup should be interesting

One of the lasting images from the Stars’ playoff series against Edmonton last spring was from Game 2. That was when Roope Hintz lay on the ice after a Darnell Nurse slash to his skate ended up fracturing Hintz’s foot (as we found out after the playoffs), keeping him out of Game 3.

Jim Nill went into detail about Hintz’s injury after the season, talking about how the Stars had trouble staunching the blood flow in Hintz’s foot after the injury, which kept him out of Game 3.

And of course, when Hintz returned for Game 4, the Oilers didn’t waste any time testing just how well Hintz’s foot was holding up, as Evan Bouchard channeled his inner Bobby Clarke with a play that went unpenalized by the officials and largely unanswered by Dallas.

Pete DeBoer and other Stars players said that part of the lack of response was predicated on the idea that they didn’t want to give the Edmonton power play more chances to beat them. But as we know now, that plan didn’t end up working out too well.

So with Edmonton back in Dallas for the first game between these teams since the playoffs, and with Glen Gulutzan echoing the “hand-to-hand combat” refrain in Dallas since he was hired over the summer, you certainly wonder if the Stars will make some kind of statement tonight.