Thursday Dallas Stars Roundup: Jamie Benn Visible, Hintz and Faksa Possible, Lukáš Dostál Inevitable
This probably won't be an easy one for Dallas, on account of none of them are
One quick programming note: I’ll be covering tonight’s game somewhat differently than usual, so AfterThoughts won’t be published until very late tonight or very early tomorrow morning. Patience is a virtue, I’m told.
Glen Gulutzan said this morning ahead of the Stars’ matchup against the Anaheim Ducks that Radek Faksa and Roope Hintz are both possibilities to return to the lineup, but that decision won’t be made until closer to game time.
Lukáš Dostál will start in goal for Anaheim tonight. The young netminder has continued to look every bit as sharp to start this season as he did last year, when Dostál stopped 34 of 36 last November in a 4-2 Anaheim win in Dallas.
However, you may recall that the Stars got some revenge later in the year, when they managed an overtime win in March despite a wild game that featured a penalty shot awarded to Leo Karlsson, as well as an overtime winner for Dallas, scored by ______.
(Do you remember who scored it? No cheating!)
As for the Stars’ lineup tonight, it was an optional skate for Dallas this morning, so there weren’t line rushes to deduce anything from, but Faksa and Hintz did both skate, along with many others like Tyler Seguin and Mikko Rantanen.
If I had to lean one way or the other, I’d say there’s a decent likelihood that at least one of those two returns, and at least a 50/50 chance that both do. And that supposition is based somewhat on the fact that both Nate Bastian and Kyle Capobianco stayed on the ice pretty late working with Casey DeSmith after the other healthy players had left. So if both Bastian and Capobianco did so because they are likely to be healthy scratches tonight, it would make sense. But of course, that’s not anything close to a guarantee.
(We try not to guarantee much around here, other than a good time and a lot of words.)
In the event that both Hintz and Faksa return, Capobianco would come out of the lineup, because if the Stars indeed have 12 healthy forwards, they would no longer need to go with an 11F/7D lineup.
And my guess is that Bastian would be the forward to come out then as well, because if both Hintz and Faksa return, one or two of Sam Steel, Tyler Seguin, and Justin Hryckowian would move back to wing, giving the Stars one too many wingers. And while Bastian has been as-advertised for the Stars so far, he doesn’t play on either end of special teams, and he averages the fewest minutes of any Stars forward. Both of those things make him a likely candidate to be scratched in these situations.
“We’re not 100% sure yet,” Gulutzan said about whether both Faksa and Hintz will return. “If we can get one of the two players back, we’ll probably be 12 and 6 tonight.”
As for any other lineup news for tonight’s game, all Gulutzan said was that Jake Oettinger is starting, returning to the net after Casey DeSmith played two games in a row while Oettinger focused more on the birth of his and his wife’s son over the weekend.
Oh, and one other notable player was on the ice this morning: Jamie Benn, who skated with the team for the first time since suffering a collapsed lung in the preseason.
“That’s a great sign,” Gulutzan said of Benn’s skating. “It’s his first skate with players, so again, we’re hoping in the near future, we can have him and Dutchy kinda get back into the fold. Don’t know the timeline there, but certainly encouraging having him out [skating] today.”
(I also wrote about each injured player on Wednesday evening. Feel free to check that out if you need a refresher.)
Anyway, let’s move on from speculation to hard news and talk about what the players are saying.
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