FLYERS VS. STARS GAME PREVIEW (7:15 A.M. EST)
Taking aim at their fourth win in six days, the Philadelphia Flyers (36-25-7) will host the speedy Dallas Stars (32-25-11) on Thursday night. Game time at the Wells Fargo Center is 7:00 p.m. EST. The match will be televised locally on CSN Philly and in Dallas on Fox Sports Southwest.
This is the second and final meeting of the season between the inter-Conference clubs. It is the lone game in Philadelphia.
On Dec. 7, the Flyers traveled to ice-storm ravaged Dallas for a Saturday matinee. They left the American Airlines Center on the receiving end of a 5-1 shellacking. It was the first game of his Flyers' career that Steve Mason yielded more than three goals. Backup goaltender Dan Ellis (since traded for Tim Thomas) earned the win in net for the Stars.
Entering the game, Tyler Seguin had just returned to the lineup after missed two games with concussion-like symptoms. Team captain Jamie Benn had been mired in a point drought, while highly touted Valeri Nichushkin had been moved around in some resulting line juggling. The line broke free against the Flyers, as Seguin erupted for a natural hat trick and an assist. Nichushkin racked up a goal and three helpers. Benn assisted on Seguin's first goal.
Things started out well enough for the Flyers. The team had to kill off nine minutes worth of penalties in the first period, including seven consecutive minutes resulting from penalties Flyers agitator Zac Rinaldo received for jumping Dallas counterpart Antoine Roussel in the opening minute of the game. Philly not only survived the nine minutes worth of penalties, they took a 1-0 lead to the locker room on a late-period goal by (since-traded) Andrej Meszaros.
The second point was quite a different story. Seguin tied the game in the opening minute of the stanza. The scored stayed 1-1 until the clock ticked down under three minutes remaining in the period. Suddenly, the Seguin line erupted for three goals in a 63-second span and turned the tie game into a commanding 4-1 lead. Seguin finished off his hat trick and then Nichushkin added his fourth NHL goal.
The third period was played more or less like a formality. Ray Emery came into the game to mop up in goal for the Flyers. Cody Eakin added further insult to injury with a shorthanded goal in the final five minutes to make it a 5-1 final.
Over the years, Philadelphia has not been a hospitable place for the Stars' franchise. The Flyers have won each of the last three games against Dallas at the Wells Fargo Center. In franchise history, including the Stars' pre-relocation era as the Minnesota North Stars, the Flyers boast a home record of 45-10 with 16 ties.
For the 2013-14 season to date, the Stars have been markedly better at home (18-10-7) than they have been on the road (14-15-4). This has been especially true since the start of the 2014 calendar year. The Flyers have enjoyed playing at home this season, bringing a 20-12-2 record at the Wells Fargo Center into tonight's match.
The Flyers will spend the remainder of the month of March at or near home. Save for a March 26 road game at Madison Square Garden, the rest of the schedule for the month consists of home games. Up next on the slate will be a matinee on Saturday afternoon against former Stars and Flyers head coach Ken Hitchcock's St. Louis Blues.
FLYERS OUTLOOK
The Flyers are 6-2-1 after the Olympic break and 11-3-1 over their last 15 games. They currently sit in second place in the Metropolitan Division, one point ahead of the New York Rangers with two games in hand. Philadelphia holds a three-point advantage on the Columbus Blue Jackets.
Coming off a weekend home-and-home sweep of the archrival Pittsburgh Penguins, the Flyers captured a rousing 3-2 home overtime victory against the defending Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks on Tuesday night. After falling into a 2-0 hole early in the game, a pair of goals by Scott Hartnell tied the game before the end of the first period. The score stayed that way until Claude Giroux scored in the final four-plus seconds of overtime to earn the win. Ray Emery, making his first start since the final game before the Olympic break, settled in well in net after allowing a shaky second goal.
The Flyers went 0-for-5 on the power play against Chicago but had a host of good scoring chances on four of the five advantages. Over the weekend set against the Penguins, the Flyers went 3-for-7 against a Pittsburgh team that had entered the home-and-home with the NHL's top-ranked penalty kill.
Philadelphia's penalty kill has also been surging of late. Against Pittsburgh's number-one ranked power play, the Flyers went a combined 9-for-9 on the PK with two shorthanded goals by Matt Read. They went 3-for-3 against the Blackhawks, who came into Tuesday's game ranked fourth in the NHL in power play efficiency. Overall, the Flyers are 18-for-18 over their last five games.
Offense has generally not been a problem for the Flyers since their early-season struggles. Through the first 15 games of the season, the Flyers scored just 22 goals (1.47 per game). Since that time, Philly has tallied 173 goals in 53 games (3.26 per game).
No player in the NHL has been hotter offensively than Giroux has over the last several months. He has 34 points (13 goals and 21 assists) in the 27 games played since January 4, which was the first game after the last time he was held pointless in back-to-back games.
In the first five games after the Olympic break, the Flyers yielded 21 goals. However, they have allowed just seven in the last four games.
Mason has been a very busy goaltender on both ends of the Olympic break. He started six of the final seven games leading into the break. Afterwards, he started each of the first eight games. This was partially due to the sparse number of games in early March and partially due to Emery being unavailable due to a groin pull. Mason is likely to return to the net tonight after Emery got the game against his former Chicago teammates.
The Flyers held an optional skate on Wednesday. The club is unlikely to make any lineup changes tonight, barring the revelation of any as-yet-unreported injuries or illnesses.
STARS OUTLOOK
The Stars have been one of the NHL's streakiest teams this season. Currently, they are in a bit of a down cycle entering the third and final game of a road trip that started in Winnipeg (7-2 blowout loss) and then took the team to Pittsburgh (5-1 loss) on Thursday. The stumble started with a blown two-goal lead in the third period of Friday's 4-3 home shootout loss to Calgary.
As a result of their recent slide, the Stars have fallen out of a wildcard spot in the Western Division playoff chase. Dallas enters tonight's game two points behind the Phoenix Coyotes for the final wildcard spot. However, the Stars hold one game in hand.
When the Stars are going well, they use their fearsome team speed to generate chances off the line rush. As with the Blackhawks, Dallas has speed to burn throughout much of the lineup, although not the same depth of offensive talent beyond the Seguin line.
When things are going poorly for the Stars, they are prone to giveaways in dangerous areas of ice and tend to lose the lion's share of board battles. The Dallas defense, while quite mobile on the whole, is not very physical (except for Brenden Dillon) and is generally undersized. At times when the Stars misplace their commitment to two-way play and puck support, they tend to get outmuscled.
One sure sign of whether the Stars are using their speed is how many penalties they draw on the opposition. Dallas has been on the man advantage just five times in its last three games (going 0-for-5). For the season, the Stars have often struggled to convert power play opportunities but did have a hot stretch for awhile before the Olympic break.
The Stars are 5-4-1 since the Olympic break. The team played a stretch of good games following the Olympic break and rallied around each other following the horrifying heart-condition related collapse on the bench by forward Rich Peverley in the first period of a postponed March 10 game in Dallas against Columbus.
However, the way the team has played in the first two games of the current road trip is reminiscent of many of the early games in the 0-6-0 losing streak with which Lindy Ruff's team started the 2014 calendar year before their next surge.
In the first meeting of the season against Philadelphia, the Seguin line got the better of head-to-head matchups against both the Sean Couturier and Giroux lines over the course of the game. However, Couturier is coming off stellar games in which he helped to hold Sidney Crosby pointless on consecutive days and then did the same to Jonathan Toews. Giroux has been playing at a Hart Trophy caliber level in the months since the Stars last played Philly.
Ruff will have an interesting decision to make tonight as to which goaltender he starts tonight. Kari Lehtonen has had miserable luck against Philly over his career, posting a lifetime 0-10-2 record, 3.50 GAA and .891 save percentage. Most of these numbers, however, came during Lehtonen's days with the often-woeful Atlanta Thrashers (and often with now-retired countryman Antero Niittymäki as his opponent in net).
Also of note is the fact that Lehtonen just returned to the lineup on Tuesday after missing several games due to a concussion sustained in a March 8 game against Minnesota. He was more a victim of poor defense than anything else in the Stars' ugly loss against the Penguins but was also not at the top of his own game.
On the flip side, Tim Thomas has enjoyed strong career numbers against the Flyers, mostly as a member of powerhouse Boston Bruins teams. The two-time Vezina Trophy winner holds a lifetime 14-4-2 record against Philly, with a 2.21 GAA, .934 save percentage, and two shutouts.
Thomas started two games against the Flyers earlier this season, while still a member of the Florida Panthers. He gave up two early goals -- the second of which came on a play where he got injured and had to leave the game -- in a 2-1 loss in October. The next month, however, he stymied a Flyers team that had entered the game on a 5-0-1 run.
On the Dallas health front, Peverley is done for the season. On Tuesday, he underwent successful surgery at the Cleveland Clinic to correct his cardiac arrhythmia. Full recovery will take several months. Prior to his collapse in the game against Columbus, Peverley had been playing for several games on the top line with Seguin and Benn. Teenage standout Nichushkin (13 goals, 30 points) has since been restored to the top line but has just two points (both assists) in the 10 games following his appearance in the Olympics.
Third-line center Shawn Horcoff also remains sidelined for the Stars. He has an upper-body injury.
KEY STAT COMPARISONS (NHL OVERALL RANKING)
Non-shootout goals per game: Flyers 2.82 (9th), Stars 2.81 (11th)
Non-shootout goals against per game: Flyers 2.79 (19th), Stars 2.82 (20th)
Even strength Goals For/Against Ratio: Flyers 0.95 (17th), Stars 0.98 (15th)
Power play efficiency: Flyers 19.7% (10th), Stars 15.8% (23rd)
Penalty killing efficiency: Flyers 84.4% (7th), Stars 81.4% (18th)
Faceoff percentage: Flyers 49.8% (16th), Stars 51.2% (9th)
PROJECTED LINEUPS (Subject to change)
FLYERS
19 Scott Hartnell - 28 Claude Giroux - 93 Jakub Voracek
40 Vincent Lecavalier - 10 Brayden Schenn - 17 Wayne Simmonds
9 Steve Downie - 14 Sean Couturier - 24 Matt Read
12 Michael Raffl - 18 Adam Hall - 36 Zac Rinaldo
44 Kimmo Timonen - 5 Braydon Coburn
8 Nicklas Grossmann - 32 Mark Streit
47 Andrew MacDonald - 22 Luke Schenn
35 Steve Mason
[29 Ray Emery]
Potential Scratches: Erik Gustafsson (healthy), Jay Rosehill (healthy), Hal Gill (healthy), Chris Pronger (LTIR, post-concussion syndrome).
STARS
14 Jamie Benn - 91 Tyler Seguin - 43 Valeri Nichushkin
21 Antoine Roussel - 20 Cody Eakin - 16 Ryan Garbutt
72 Erik Cole - 38 Vernon Fiddler - 22 Colton Sceviour
13 Ray Whitney - 18 Chris Mueller - 12 Alex Chiasson
33 Alex Goligoski - 6 Trevor Daley
24 Jordie Benn - 4 Brenden Dillon
23 Kevin Connauton - 55 Sergei Gonchar
30 Tim Thomas or 32 Kari Lehtonen
Potential Scratches: Rich Peverley (IR, heart surgery), Shawn Horcoff (upper body), Aaron Rome (healthy).
****************
Click below to follow me on Twitter:
Philadelphia Flyers Blogger •NHL.com • 
Join the Discussion:
»