Lightning at Stars Game Thread and Preview:

Game : Tampa Bay Lightning (39-23-5) at Dallas Stars (43-21-3)

Time: 8:00 PM EST

Location: American Airlines Center, Dallas

TV/Stream/Radio: FDSNSUN, Victory+, ESPN+, 102.5 FM, Lightning App

Odds: Lightning -135

Know the Opponents: Defending Big D

Story Lines and Notes

After a brief stop at home for a 2-0 win over the Philadelphia Flyers, the Tampa Bay Lightning are on the road again as they head out west for a three-game road trip that starts in Dallas. Believe it or not it’s the Lightning’s next to last road trip of the season (we’re not counting their season-ending game in New York as a road trip). Yup, the season is almost over.

For most teams, losing their top defenseman (Miro Heiskanen) and one of their top forwards (Tyler Seguin) would derail their season. Instead they kept plugging away, oh and went out and acquired the top forward on the trade market in Mikko Rantanen. Their 89 points is second in the Western Conference, but unfortunately the team that has more points is in their division, the Winnipeg Jets and their 98 points.

The Stars have been exceptional at home with a 25-7-1 record and they kicked off their four-game home-stand with a win against Anaheim on Tuesday. They’ve reeled off wins in bunches as they a four-game a seven-game winning streak, a five-game winning streak, a couple of four-game winning streaks, and a couple of three-game winning streaks.

When one defender (Heiskanen) goes down, another steps up (Thomas Harley). When one forward goes down (Seguin) another steps up Roope Hintz. Harley has 42 points (13 goals, 29 assists) and Hintz has 55 (25 goals, 30 assists). After a slow start Jason Robertson is back to his old ways with 29 goals while Wyatt Johnston is at 25. Who needs Logan Stankoven when you have 23-year-old Mavrik Bourque hitting double-digits in goals in his first season?

So, it’s not going to be an easy day in Dallas for the Lightning. Wait. Hold on a second.

If you’re of a certain age, that theme song pops into your head every time someone says “Dallas”. Now that we have that out of the way, we can keep going.

After whacking Boston to finish up their road trip, the Lightning struggled a bit, but beat the Flyers thanks to Andrei Vasilevskiy’s performance in net and a solid defensive effort. Tampa Bay made mistakes in the 2-0 win, but they also covered for them pretty well. Mistakes are going to happen in the game of hockey, after it’s played on ice, and ice is slippery as hell. When a team is playing sound, team-oriented defense, they are in position to cover for mistakes and limit prime opportunities. That’s what the Bolts did against Philadelphia.

They will have to play a little better against Dallas, because the Stars are clicking on offense right now so it’s unlikely two goals are going to win the game tonight. We’re going to see a match-up of a hot penalty kill (the Lightning are at 93.1% over their last ten games) against a hot power play (the Stars are at 34.5% in their last ten), not to mention two teams that don’t struggle scoring at 5v5.

After a few games of having their secondary scoring carry them, a couple of the big guns (Nikita Kucherov and Jake Guentzel) provided the goals for the win over Philadelphia. Now we’re just waiting on another big gun to get going again – Brayden Point.

Over the last ten games Point has one goal and two assists at 5v5 play. Throw in his power play numbers and it’s not much better as he is still at one goal (but he does have three more assists). Six points in ten games is good for most players, but it’s not good enough for Brayden Point.

His underlying numbers have taken a hit as well. These numbers are at all strengths because his power play metrics are pretty much the same. Shooting at 22.96% isn’t really sustainable, but Point has been around 20% over the last three years. He may not shoot the puck hard, but he can knock a spot of pollen off of a bee’s knee.

This could just be a mini-slump and he’ll work his way out of it. After generating just one high-danger chances in his previous three games, he had five against Boston. He also had eight shot attempts in that game (although only one went on net).

Based on yesterday’s practice, it looks like Coach Cooper is splitting him from Kucherov for the time being with Yanni Gourde back on the top line. Personally, we like Kucherov on the Brandon Hagel and Anthony Cirelli line, as it balances things out defensively, but it does take a little offense away from the top line without Kucherov setting Guentzel and Point up all night long.

Tonight’s game will be a good test for the Bolts. The Flyers are out of the playoffs, and the Bruins are a shell of their former selves. Dallas is a playoff team and will challenge the Lightning. We’ll see how they handle that.

Stats

Potential Lines

Tampa Bay Lightning

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Dallas Stars

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