First Shift 🏒
Mason Marchment will be out “week to week” after taking a puck to the face Friday in a 3-2 OT loss to the Minnesota Wild.
While there is no official report on what damage Marchment sustained, Stars coach Pete DeBoer said the gritty forward was “not good.” Because of that, the team shuffled lines in practice on Saturday in preparation for a Sunday game at Chicago.
“You ever throw balls up in the air?” DeBoer said sarcastically when asked about the process of picking lines. “Sometimes you get to that point.”
Duchene is the team’s leading scorer with 30 points (13 goals, 17 assists) and was leading one of the best lines in the league for the first two months of the season. However, right winger Seguin is out 4-6 months after hip surgery in early December and now left winger Marchment is down with his facial injury. That leaves Duchene as a man in need of new linemates. DeBoer on Saturday had Benn and Johnston flanking Duchene, and said there was definitely discussion that took place in coming up with that alignment.
“We’ve got a coaching room with five really smart minds, and a lot of times there are five different opinions,” DeBoer said. “A lot of time it’s player feedback. One guy feels like this might work. Sometimes that supersedes your own thoughts because you want to make the players as comfortable as possible. It’s not an easy answer because there are a lot of things involved.”
Helping Duchene right now makes sense. He has been a driving force, and both Benn and Johnston could be able to play off Duchene’s puck-possession style.
“There’s logic to it,” DeBoer said. “We’re loading up some lines. I think the team has been built on depth all year, and now our depth is tested, so we’ve got to look at different ways. We’re trying to load up the top guys a little bit more and hope that works.”
Johnston has played right wing on the top line with Roope Hintz and Robertson and will play right wing on this line. He has more recently been the center on a line with Benn and Evgenii Dadonov, and that trio scored both goals in Friday’s game. Still, Johnston said it will be a great opportunity to play on a line with Duchene.
“I know his game well,” Johnston said. “He sees the ice so well, he can make plays at any time, so you just have to be ready and read off of him. If you find the ice, he’ll get you the puck, so it’s up to you to find the ice.”
Dadonov will jump up and play on the top line, and that will allow the coaches to put together a line of Logan Stankoven, Mavrik Bourque and Oskar Bäck. All three were in the AHL last season and although not always playing together, they are familiar with each other’s game. Stankoven and Bourque have played together, so Bäck said he will try to adjust.
“I think they will play off of each other and then I will try to help as much as I can,” Bäck said. “I will play my game and try to win pucks for them and then be a presence around the net.”
That will leave a fourth line with familiar teammates Colin Blackwell and Sam Steel welcoming in Justin Hryckowian for his NHL debut. The 23-year-old from Quebec was signed as a free agent last season and has been playing in the AHL for the Texas Stars. He has 26 points (12 goals, 14 assists) in 27 games. Hryckowian has been called up twice this season and not played, but he is expected to be in the lineup on Sunday.
“He had a great camp,” DeBoer said. “He’s a good kid. I know he’s going to empty the tank and give us everything he’s got.”
And that likely goes for the entire team. Dallas is coming off a loss Friday where it lost a 2-0 lead in the third period, and lost 6-2 the last time it played in Chicago. The Stars are 4-5-1 over their past 10 games and rank 26th in scoring (2.59 goals per game) in that span.
“The changing of lines is our fault,” Johnston said. “We haven’t been scoring as much as we need to and we haven’t been winning as much as we need to. If it’s not working, that’s when you start changing things up. At the end of the day, it’s up to the individual players to do the right thing and do their part.”
