Sunday Dallas Stars Roundup: Roope Hintz's Prognosis, Michael Bunting's Flexibility, and What Tyler Myers Noticed

Arttu Hyry has also been recalled to Dallas

L-R: Stan Tugolukov, David Pelletier, Kyle Capobianco, Jombie, and Alex Petrovic

The Dallas Stars will face the Chicago Blackhawks at 5pm today in hopes of avoiding a season sweep. Stars fans will well remember that the Stars’ January swoon really kicked into gear with a post-Christmas shootout loss in Dallas that turned out to be the second of 10 losses over a 12-game span.

This time around, the Stars are playing far better hockey than they were then, but they’re also playing fairly shorthanded, too. During the Colorado tilt on Friday, the Stars players who didn’t dress for the game were as follows: Tyler Seguin, Mikko Rantanen, Tyler Myers, Michael Bunting, Radek Faksa, Alex Petrovic, and Kyle Capobianco.

Myers and Bunting will make their Stars debuts today, but given we can now add Roope Hintz to that mix of injured Stars players, it’s striking just how many good players Dallas has on the shelf right now. Being without Rantanen, Hintz, Seguin, and Faksa could easily have led to an extended spiral from the team that lost to Chicago back in December. But lately, the Stars have found a way to keep playing great hockey, and it’s led to a franchise-best winning streak that is still vestigially present in an 11-game points streak.

Hintz’s absence is the freshest pain, so let’s start there. Glen Gulutzan said on Saturday that while the Stars are hoping Hintz will return either before or at the beginning of the playoffs, they still don’t know exactly how long he’ll be out after suffering a lower-body injury while wrestling with Nathan MacKinnon on Friday.

But what they do know is that Hintz’s absence isn’t going to be a brief one.

“He’s gonna miss some time,” Gulutzan said. “We don’t know exactly how much, but it’s not a couple days. So we’ll see exactly how long that is. He’s gotta go see another doctor, so we’ll see how long that’s gonna be. Not great news.”

Gulutzan went on to say that while they still didn’t know all the information, Head Athletic Trainer Dave Zeis is generally pretty accurate when it comes to giving a rough estimate on injuries like these. So even though the Stars don’t have all the final medical reports and opinions yet, they feel pretty confident that Hintz won’t be playing again until around the start of the playoffs.

“Yeah, we’re very hopeful with that, for sure” Gulutzan said of Hintz’s return for the postseason. “Maybe even before that. We’re very hopeful, but it’s gonna be a couple weeks, for sure, before you’ll see him skating. But we’re hoping that it’s before the playoffs.”

While Hintz appears to have avoided the worst-case scenario of an ACL-like injury that would have ended his season entirely, Gulutzan still made sure to point out that missing key players does take its toll, eventually.

“When you start missing players like Roope and ‘Rants for long periods of time, it puts stress [on the team],” Gulutzan said. “I thought our guys have done a great job, all guys. And we’re gonna have to continue to do it.”

One thing Gulutzan and a few players reiterated on Saturday is that the Stars’ defensive work against Colorado—Dallas held the Avalanche to season-lows in scoring chances and high-danger shot attempts at 5-on-5—was a strong proof of concept. As encouraging for them as it was to dominate Calgary and Vancouver, playing that well against the best team in the league means something more.

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Some likely consequences of Hintz and Faksa’s continued absences will be players like Justin Hryckowian, Oskar Bäck, and even Arttu Hyry getting more time at center. Hyry was recalled to Dallas this morning after scoring two goals Saturday night for AHL Texas, but whether he’s in Dallas as insurance or because another forward might be coming out of the lineup remains to be seen.

Every forward participated in practice on Saturday, though all of Harley, Lindell, and Heiskanen were given well-deserved maintenance days after playing heavy minutes in an intense battle on Friday.