PREVIEW 7:00 AM CST

Playing for the third time in four nights, the Dallas Stars (26-22-2) return home tonight to take on the Minnesota Wild (25-19-7). The game starts at 7 PM CST and will be broadcast locally on Fox Sports Southwest.

This is the second of four meetings between the teams this season, and the first of two in Dallas. In one of their worst performances of the season, Dallas traveled to Minnesota on Jan. 21 and absorbed a 5-2 defeat at the hands of a Wild team that had been utterly starved for goals and victories for a full month.

The Stars actually held leads of 1-0 and 2-1 in that game but were steamrolled by a three-goal onslaught by Minnesota in the span of 59 seconds. The explosion of goals was immediately preceded by a fight between the Wild's Darroll Powe and the Stars' Steve Ott.

Dallas has had a roller coaster start since the All-Star break. They played very well in defeating Anaheim on Wednesday and then got blown out in San Jose the next night to fall to 0-8-1 in the second half of back-to-back games. Kari Lehtonen will return to the net today for the Stars.

Minnesota enters this coming coming off a 1-0 road shutout of Colorado behind 37 saves by Niklas Bäckström. The Wild remain a banged up squad, missing team captain Mikko Koivu (separated shoulder and fellow forwards Guillaume Latendresse (post-concussion symptoms), Jarod Palmer (upper body), and Pierre-Marc Bouchard (concussion/groin).

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