Looking to finish strong before a long schedule hiatus overlapping with the NHL's All-Star break, Lindy Ruff's Dallas Stars (30-14-5) play host to Bob Hartley's Calgary Flames (21-22-3) on Monday night. Game time at the American Airlines Center is 7:30 p.m. CT. The game will be televised on Fox Sports Southwest.
This is the third and final meeting of the season between the teams, and the second in Dallas. Thus far, the Stars are winless against the Flames this season. On Dec. 1 at the Saddledome, the teams played to a 3-3 tie through 65 minutes before the Flames won via shootout on Johnny Gaudreau's winning conversion. On Dec. 17 in Dallas, Calgary skated to a 3-1 regulation win.
The Stars will be glad to see the month of January come to an end. The club has posted a 2-6-1 record since the calendar flipped to 2016.
On Saturday night against the visiting Colorado Avalanche, the Stars outshot the Avs by a 43-15 margin for the game (including a whopping 33-8 disparity over the second and third periods) and only took one penalty for the game. Nevertheless, the Stars never led in the game and went down to a 3-1 defeat as Colorado scored once in each period.
The Stars' backs were broken by a first-period shorthanded goal by Carl Söderberg, followed by a second-period shorthanded goal by Gabriel Landeskog. A Jason Demers power play goal stood as the lone Dallas goal. Mikhail Grigorenko added some insurance for the Avanlanche in the latter stages of the third period. Antti Niemi stopped 12 of 15 shots in a losing cause, while Dallas struggled to solve Semyon Varlamov (42 saves).
Calgary has not been faring well as of late, either. The team has dropped five of its last seven games (2-4-1) and is coming off a 5-2 road loss in Raleigh to the Carolina Hurricanes on Saturday. Monday's game is the second half of a back-to-back road set.
In the game against the Canes, the Flames fell into a 3-0 deficit that was too much to overcome. Calgary clawed back to within a goal but then yielded two goals in a span of 32 seconds to see the game get put out of reach. Jiri Huder and Joe Colborne scored in a losing cause for Calgary, while losing goalie Karri Rà¤mö (16 saves on 19 shots) could not withstand an early Carolina bombardment and was pulled at 3:50 of the second period after the third Hurricanes goal. Jonas Hiller went the rest of the way, stopping 15 of 17 shots.
On the bright side for Calgary, veteran defenseman Mark Giordano has hit a good offensive groove of late. Giordano has picked up at least one point in nine of his last 10 games, and has 11 points (one goal, 10 assists) overall in that span.
The Flames are missing forward Micheal Ferland (upper-body injury) from their lineup, while the Stars are without defenseman Jordie Benn (lower-body injury). Both players are on injured reserve for their respective clubs.