Game Preview @ Dallas: Brodin is Back

The Wild head to Dallas for a Black Friday (sorry, Black Friday is horrible, don’t go spend your money today) match-up against the Stars. The Wild have won the first two matches against Dallas this year — one in St. Paul and one in Dallas — but Dallas has a lot of firepower and could be in midst of turning a terrible start to the season around.

Dallas remains a place where the Wild have had troubles historically, with a 3-15-6 record at American Airlines Center.

The Stars, though they sit second to last in the Central Division, have been improving recently and are riding a three-game winning streak into Friday night, the finale of a five-game homestand.

The Stars have had their depth tested early — losing Patrick Nemeth for the season, Valeri Nichushkin for months following surgery, and still being without Rich Peverley after last year’s incident. You can count promising young winger Colton Sceviour out tonight as well, he’s sick. The Stars have called up Curtis McKenzie to replace him.

The Stars will also be without Ryan Garbutt who will be serving the first of a two-game suspension for a knee-on-knee hit with Edmonton’s Taylor Hall.

The blue line isn’t just short because of the absence of rookie Nemeth, but the team has recently traded away veteran power play specialist Sergei Gonchar and young defender Brenden Dillon, taking in return a parking cone Travis Moen and Jason Demers, respectively.

The Stars create a lot of offense, led by league-leading scorer Tyler Seguin, who currently has 17 goals. But defensively they’ve been porous with Kari Lehtonen and his .908 save percentage — who will get the start tonight — being a bit of a roller coaster and back-up Anders Lindback being pretty miserable in every start he’s seen. Lindback currently has a .845 SV% and a 4.52 GAA.

It looks like the 9-9-4 Stars lines will field the below lines tonight, with the “Superline” broken up and Ales Hemsky back with Jason Spezza (he has been for a little while now) as the team tries to get Hemsky going. He’s been a bit of a bust for the team thus far, tallying just five assists and no goals through 21 games. He’s also been a healthy scratch once this season. Jordie Benn will be the health scratch tonight.

Benn-Seguin-Eaves
Cole-Spezza-Hemsky
Roussel-Eakin-McKenzie
Horcoff-Fiddler-Moen

Daley-Demers
Goligoski-Klingberg
Jokipakka-Oleksiak

Nemeth was a rookie and in his absence the team is still fielding three rookie defensemen in John Klingberg, Jyrki Jokipakka, and Jamie Oleksiak. Oleksiak and Jokipakka have both been solid so far, but Klingberg — who has now played just eight NHL games — has been a monster. He’s eating up a ton of minutes and putting points on the board. The team has started turning to him in key moments and giving him good power play time as Trevor Daley continues to struggle putting points on the board. Klingberg is riding a five-game point streak over which he’s scored three goals and five assists.

Daley has been united with former Sharks d-man Demers, who was coming off a career-best year for the Sharks but struggling to get his offensive touch going this year.

At the Wild’s end of the rink Darcy Kuemper will get the nod in net following a really terrible performance on Wednesday against the Kings where he allowed four goals on ten shots in the first period before getting the hook.

Wild line groupings should look something like this tonight:

Parise-Granlund-Pominville
Zucker-Koivu-Vanek
Niederreiter-Coyle-Haula
Carter-Brodziak-Fontaine

Suter-Brodin
Scandella-Spurgeon
Ballard-Dumba-Prosser (one will be a scratch, I’m guessing Ballard)

Stu Bickel will be a healthy scratch for Minnesota.

Big pre-game news for the Wild is that defenseman Jonas Brodin looks like he’ll return to the lineup tonight after missing a good chunk of time with mumps/mumps-like symptoms. He has skated last three days and took part in this morning’s optional morning skate. Afterward he told Michael Russo that he’ll be playing.

That means we’ll see a scratch on defense between Keith Ballard, Nate Prosser, and Mathew Dumba. I’m guessing it’s Ballard. Prosser has been getting a lot of ice time and had worked himself into the top four while the Wild cycled through defensive illnesses. Dumba’s the only one who has been producing offensively and has the ability to be a part of the power play. Also, since the return of Marco Scandella, Dumba has posted better possession numbers, better plus/minus, and has started to really look like his game is improving.

Kuemper will need to, again, prove that he can recover from a really lousy outing where he gets shelled and pulled. It’s been happening a little too often. He’s been pretty Jeckyl and Hyde so far this season. Posting three shutouts in four games and then having a few games where he lets one easy one in and then things begin to take an ugly turn. He’s managed to rebound nicely so far from those ugly starts though.

Wednesday’s loss was rough, but it came on the heels of the team winning two of three on an east coast swing, improving their road record to 5-7-0 and going 5-2 over the last seven games. They aren’t polishing up the President’s Trophy with those numbers, but the Wild are trending in the right direction on the road, something they have struggled with in recent seasons. They’ll hope to keep that going for tonight’s 7:30pm CST puck drop.

The Stars are on a three-game win streak, but went 2-8-2 in the 12 games preceding this streak, which including seven straight losses, with five in a row coming in regulation.

Catch the game on TV with Fox Sports North Plus and on the radio at KFAN 100.3 FM. You can also listen to KFAN online at iheartradio.com.