The Tampa Bay Lightning (18-23-4) travel to the American Airlines Center to take on the Dallas Stars (24-19-2) tonight in Texas. It is a crucial game for the Stars as they continue to hover around the playoff places, but continue to struggle stringing any substantial number of wins together. Taking 2 points from the game tonight is critical for Dallas as they take on a struggling Lightning side.
All-Star Jamie Benn and veteran centre Mike Ribeiro both continue to be out through injury and the testing times for the Stars continue without 2 potent weapons with the puck. Speaking about the current injury situation today, captain Brendan Morrow said; “We’ve just got to keep sticking with it, we have a depleted line-up with our two big centermen out, but this is the way we’re going to have to play, just scratch and claw for 60 minutes and hope for breaks”.
Both teams come into the game with woeful powerplay records, as the Stars are 14.1% and the Lightning are 13.7%. The Stars should look to be getting a lot more of their goals on the powerplay now, to try and counteract the loss of Benn and Ribeiro in 5 on 5 hockey.
The Lightning have been very poor so far and have definitely been tagged as the underachievers. When I watched them reach the conference finals last season, I tipped them to be the Stanley Cup winners for the 2011/12 campaign. They looked an awesome outfit, with some huge talent on their roster. However, with a lack of consistency from the goaltending unit, the Bolts have conceded a massive 159 goals this season, the most in the NHL.
The Stars will be pleased to have full strength defensive pairings for tonight’s game as they will try and contain the threat of Steven Stamkos, the young Canadian centre, who has a huge 31 goals and 51 points this season. He is a sublime talent and plays alongside several other dangerous players with the puck such as Martin St.Louis and Vincent Lacavalier.
Both teams have several injuries going into tonights game. The Stars are without Jamie Benn and Mike Ribeiro as mentioned earlier, and Philip Larsen (head) and Tomas Vincour (knee) are also both out. The Lightning have a long list of injuries, consisting of Mattias Ohlund (knee), Victor Hedman (concussion), Adam Hall(upper body), Ryan Shannon (lower body), Dana Tyrell (lower body), Marc-Andrew Bergeron (upper body, day-to-day) and JT Wyman (upper body, day-to-day).
It should be an entertaining encounter, with puck drop being at 7.30pm at the AAC.
