Minnesota Wild: Know Your Rivals – Dallas Stars

The Minnesota Wild as always faces a steep challenge to emerge from the Central Division. What about their rivals?

We’re looking at each of the teams in the Central Division in the hopes of gauging how much more or less of a threat they now are to the Minnesota Wild.

Next up are the Dallas Stars. They’ll be hoping a new coach is the cure to years of up-and-down performances. The talent is certainly there but they’ve never been able to piece it together and even so much as a perennial wild-card team.

When Do We Face Them:

@ Dallas (Friday, October 19 @ 7PM)
vs Dallas (Saturday, December 22 @ 7PM)
@ Dallas (Friday, February 1 @ 7PM)
vs Dallas (Thursday, March 14 @ 7PM)
@ Dallas (Saturday, April 6 @ 7PM)

How We Match Up With Them

They have top-tier talent in Jamie Benn, the freshly re-signed Tyler Seguin and Alexander Radulov.

Also, the sheer fact they were mentioned routinely in the Erik Karlsson sweepstakes suggest that there’s certainly a level of competency among their backroom staff.

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If Ben Bishop dishes up a season that matches his potential, they could be a real challenge to get past. John Klingberg is no slouch on defense either.

In seasons’ past the depth didn’t go beyond these five guys, but I think they are far better set up now. The Minnesota Wild won’t be able to rely on simply shutting down their top line.

Acquiring Greg Pateryn from them was somewhat of a small coup; he offers physicality that I think could stymie the guys below their top-six. If Nick Seeler and Jordan Greenway are all thrown out there against their bottom-six, I think physicality wins the day.

Maybe that’s going to be the trick this year. They don’t exactly scream speed on their bottom pairing either, especially if former Toronto Maple Leafs’ defenseman, Roman Polak is a regular.

A bit of an injection of pace into the Minnesota Wild lines against them will be the other key based on that.

Limiting the clean break-outs was key to downing the Dallas Stars last year; hopefully for the Minnesota Wild that doesn’t change too much under their new coaching.

Every game against them last season saw a big scoreline; we understand how to score against them but equally they understand scoring against us. Hopefully Devan Dubnyk is on form when Dallas come to town!

I’m expecting improvement from Dallas, but not enough to challenge for a play-off spot. The division is a bit too strong.