The Stars will start a stretch of 10 games against the Central Division Tuesday beginning with the St. Louis Blues at home.
Dallas is 13-10-2 and four points out of the second wild card spot. St. Louis is 15-8-5 and firmly in third place in the division. The Blues have played three more games, but they also have a plus-17 goal differential to minus-1 for the Stars. What all that means is Dallas needs to win some games here if it wants to remain in a spot where it can make a run at the postseason.
"This is the most important part of the schedule up to this point," said Stars coach Rick Bowness. "We don't like where we are in the standings. The conference is very tough this year. It's not only our division we have to beat. There are a lot of good teams in the Pacific, and we have to get into those top three spots because that's the only way you're going to be guaranteed a playoff position. This is a team that's sitting in third spot today and it's up to us to do what we can to catch them."
The Stars will do that with a limited lineup. Roope Hintz, Alexander Radulov and Joel Kiviranta will miss the game, Bowness said, because of injury or illness. That means Dallas will have to make adjustments to the lineup.
The Stars are coming off a 2-1 loss at San Jose in which they had 77 shot attempts and 21 scoring chances, so Bowness said he believes the team is in a good place despite the injuries and illness.
"That was the best road game we've played all year, and the feeling on the bench and the feeling in the room, we felt very good about the game, we just didn't score," he said. "That's how we have to play tonight. You take that game from San Jose and duplicate tonight, duplicate it again on Friday, duplicate it again on Saturday. That's how we have to play."
