Tuesday Dallas Stars Roundup: Catching up with Reilly Smith, Injury Updates on Hintz and Rantanen, and Bruce Cassidy Talks Dallas' Changes under Gulutzan

Also: a quick thought about defense activation

Reilly Smith

The Vegas Golden Knights come to Dallas tonight on a 1-5-0 skid. Rasmus Andersson’s arrival hasn’t quite heralded a surge in the standings, as the Knights have gone just 5-10-2 since acquiring the sought-after defenseman back in mid-January.

Still, Dallas knows all too well how dangerous Bruce Cassidy’s team can be, and that’s even truer considering all the bodies Dallas is missing right now. As for a couple of those missing persons, Glen Gulutzan gave some minor updates on Roope Hintz and Mikko Rantanen today. And for once, we got a bit of good news, starting with Rantanen.

“He skated yesterday for the first time,” Gulutzan said of the superstar winger. “So we're hoping. It’s the 10th day, and somewhere in a two-week range to two-and-a-half-week range, maybe we could have him back.”

Rantanen skated on his own yesterday—he didn’t participate in Dallas’s optional practice with the other handful of players who skated—but just to have him back on the ice is a good sign. By my math, the two-and-a-half weeks Gulutzan mentioned take Rantanen to the end of March, which should give him time to get back into form well before the playoffs, if all goes according to plan. But as always, we’ll wait on getting too confident about these projections until we see the player skating in practice.

Regarding Hintz, the good news was not quite as specific, but it was moderately positive after the team’s conversations with all the doctors involved.

“Nothing surgical, so that's a real big plus,” Gulutzan said of Hintz. “Hopefully we stay on that week-to-week timeline, and hopefully he can play before the playoffs.”

While “week-to-week” is never the best of news, the Stars have around five weeks until the playoffs begin. We’ll see if that ends up being enough time for Hintz to find his way back into action before the biggest games of the year.

Likely Lineup

Based on what we saw at morning skate, it sounds like Jake Oettinger will start in net against Vegas, and one forward lineup change will take place: Arttu Hyry will draw in for Nathan Bastian.

Robertson-Johnston-Bourque
Steel-Duchene-Benn
Bunting-Hryckowian-Erne
Bäck-Hyry-Blackwell

Lindell-Heiskanen
Harley-Lundkvist
Bichsel-Myers

Oettinger

While Gulutzan acknowledged that it’s always tough to take a player out of the lineup when they’re playing well, like Bastian has been, the reality of the situation is that the Stars lost a lot of faceoffs on the penalty kill against Colorado (the Avs went 6-for-7), and Hyry can help with that. He’s also no slouch at even-strength, where he’s big, defensively sound, and brings a sneaky-good shot.

On faceoffs, the Stars have been missing Tyler Seguin’s right-handed ability in the circle, as well as Radek Faksa and Hintz’s overall faceoff prowess, particularly when down a man, where Colin Blackwell and Wyatt Johnston have struggled this year. So we’ll see if Hyry can bolster that part of the Stars’ game.

As far as Hyry’s position: although Oskar Bäck has played center recently, Gulutzan said today that he’s used Bäck almost exclusively as winger this year, and Bäck also hasn’t taken many draws. So while it’s not too common to see a less-experienced NHLer like Hyry displace a sophomore like Bäck in the middle of that fourth line, recent history suggests both players might be more comfortable with this arrangement than the alternative, and that’s what Gulutzan appears to think, too.

Plus, Hyry is a Star Wars guy. That has to count for something.

Bruce Cassidy sees Dallas shooting less, too