Just five days after the Stars’ narrow shootout victory over the Canadiens in Montreal, two of the NHL’s hottest teams will square off again in Dallas on Thursday night.
Dallas is 8-1-0 in its last nine games while Montreal is 10-2-1 in its last 13. The Canadiens are on a five-game points streak (4-0-1), with Saturday’s 2-1 shootout loss to the Stars serving as the only blemish in that run.
Montreal rebounded from the defeat with a 5-3 road win over the Utah Hockey Club on Tuesday, although it took the Canadiens some time to get going. Montreal was outscored 2-1 and outshot 14-3 during a sloppy first period that saw the team take four penalties.
“We got ourselves into some penalty trouble. You can’t really do that — it creates problems for our team,” Canadiens forward Kirby Dach said. “It’s tough to get into the flow of the game and have four lines rolling, but we found a way to hit our stride in the second [period] and just kind of rolled from there.”
Avoiding the box has been an issue for a Canadiens team that is among the league leaders in penalties and penalty minutes. Montreal’s penalty-kill unit has been playing respectably well given this heavy workload, with an 82 percent kill rate.
The Stars’ elite penalty-kill unit is 35-for-38 over its last 17 games, and the team’s struggling power play also might be close to starting to spark. Dallas is 5-for-11 with the extra attacker over its last five games, including a 2-for-3 performance in Tuesday’s 4-1 win over the Toronto Maple Leafs.
The Toronto game was a bounce-back for the Stars, who saw their seven-game winning streak end in Sunday’s 3-2 loss to the Ottawa Senators. Dallas got on track Tuesday, as Logan Stankoven’s tally midway through the first period was the first of four unanswered goals for the Stars.
“Start of the game they were taking it to us a little bit. … We weathered the storm and got one, a big goal by (Stankoven). I think we drew a lot of energy off that,” said Matt Duchene, who had a goal and two assists.
Dallas’ slow start involved the loss of Roope Hintz, who didn’t return to the game after sustaining an upper-body injury in the first period. Hintz is questionable for Thursday’s game.
The Stars return to Dallas after a five-game road trip, and the club’s 16-5-1 home record is among the best in the league. The Canadiens may be up to the challenge, as they are 7-2-0 in their last nine away games.
Thursday’s game figures to be a rematch of last Saturday’s goaltending duel. Montreal’s Sam Montembeault stopped 35 of 36 shots, but Jake Oettinger stopped 30 of 31 plus all three attempts in the shootout.
Captain Nick Suzuki leads the Canadiens with 43 points (13 goals, 30 assists). Duchene is the Stars’ leader with 41 points (17 goals, 24 assists).
Lane Hutson has three goals and 32 assists through 43 games, making him the second-quickest rookie in Canadiens history and the sixth-quickest rookie defenseman in NHL history to reach the 30-assist plateau in a season. Hutson has nine points (one goal, eight assists) during a five-game points streak.
The Stars are 8-2-1 in 11 games against Montreal since the start of the 2018-19 season.
–Field Level Media
