Blues at Stars Preview: Close competition

The Dallas Stars stumbled out of the gate this season with a 1-7-1 start, but they turned that ship around fast and haven’t slowed down. They’re four points behind the Blues in the Central but have the same amount of wins and are 8-1-1 in their last ten games. They were shut out by the Blackhawks on Tuesday for that one loss, which ended a seven-game winning streak and a 12 game point streak.

The Stars have never been an easy opponent for the Blues. They forced St. Louis to seven games and an overtime in the playoffs, and during the regular season, the games tend to turn into battle royales. Jamie Benn has five goals in his last three games against the Blues and Tyler Seguin has eight points in his last six games against St. Louis. Former Blue and St. Louis native Ben Bishop has three wins in his last four games against the Blues in Dallas. Roope Hintz is leading the team with ten goals, while Alexander Radulov is close behind with eight. Tyler Seguin is leading the team in points by a country mile with 21.

Factor in half of the Blues being broken right now, and tonight might be a tougher battle than usual.

Vladimir Tarasenko, Alexander Steen, Sammy Blais, Klim Kostin (in the AHL), and now Oskar Sundqvist are all on the IR. Thank goodness for Troy Brouwer, I suppose.

And then there’s this:

We appear to have reached the Austin Poganski period of the season a little sooner than expected.

Wednesday night the Blues snapped their two game losing streak in very convincing fashion to the Tampa Bay Lightning, but two of the goals in the 4-3 victory came from Oskar Sundqvist. Nathan Walker should be in tonight, but don’t expect his 12 AHL goals so far this season to automatically transfer over into a goal tonight. He should be, though, a perfectly fine plug-in for Sundqvist, though the Blues would be better off with Sunny in the line-up.