Game Preview: Stars Look For Third Straight Road Win in Philadelphia Monday

The Stars have found some success on the road. While things have not gone exactly to plan, they still skated out of both Buffalo and Detroit with the maximum available four points. It took four power-play goals against the Sabres and a late heroic comeback to beat Detroit in overtime, but when it is all said and done, they have won two in a row on the road.

"This is a very resilient group," Bowness said. "Things haven't gone great for us at times this season, but no one has hung their heads, no one has felt sorry for themselves. We battled hard last night, and I give our guys credit. They got a fluky one, and you've got to live with that, but you overcome it. We needed the whole 60 minutes just to tie it up, and the guys came through with a huge goal in the end."

Now, they must do it all over again. On Monday, Dallas will face the Philadelphia Flyers before traveling to New Jersey for a trip-ending matchup with the Devils on Tuesday.

While all four teams on the trip are in the bottom half of the league standings, the Flyers are struggling far more than the rest. After a mediocre start to the season, Philly has now lost 11 straight games dating back to Dec. 29. This marks the second time this season they have lost 10 games in a row.

They rank near the bottom of the league in both goals against and goals for, and have had issues all over the ice. They are also expected to be undermanned with multiple injuries sweeping through the dressing room. For Dallas, they cannot let another one of these chances slip away as they did against the Habs.

“We have been in ruts like that, I think every team has gone through it,” Pavelski said. “You find ways to lose those games when you are stuck in ruts like that. It’s a dangerous team, they got some players that like to make plays. From what we have seen, they want to play fast, they want to attack you. You can never take a team lightly like this. They want to get going, we want to keep going, it should be a good match.”

Monday is a big night for Flyers defenseman, Keith Yandle. Yandle is one game away from tying the Ironman record (964 consecutive regular-season games) and is set to do so on Monday against Dallas. Yandle is currently on a streak that has not seen him miss a game in 12 years.

The Stars are looking for balance. Over their past three games (2-1-0), they have found a huge spark in their overall offense. They threw over 100 shot attempts at Montreal and racked up five goals in each of their last two games. The issue? They have also allowed at least four goals in all three of those contests.

"We're certainly not happy giving up four goals, but we're certainly happy we scored five," coach Rick Bowness said. "We have to tighten up. We're trying to find ways to win 2-1, 3-2, but if we can find a way to score four or five goals, we want to do that. But there’s too many goals going in our net."

While they want to get back to playing “Dallas Stars Hockey”, they may not want to rush it too much. Perhaps, with the new issues defensively, they were forced to unlock a new part of their offense that they did not know existed. If Bowness and his staff are able to channel that while nudging the defensive game closer to what they like, this team may find a balance that they have been searching for since Lindy Ruff.

"Just more offense, getting the D involved, trying to score more off the rush, a little more creativity," Bowness said. “The D have to make better reads on when they can and cannot go down the wall. It's a little bit of both the defense and the forwards. It goes back to building that trust with each other."

The Stars will be without a couple of key defensive forwards in tonight’s game. Michael Raffl is expected to miss at least 10 days after blocking a shot against Detroit and Radek Faksa is suffering from a non-COVID-related illness.

Jake Oettinger will get the start tonight after Braden Holtby played the previous two games. Oettinger has struggled a bit lately and is looking to respond tonight to what feels like the first real adversity of his young career.

“We all love working with young players, Bowness said.” Especially when he has such a good work ethic and character like Jake. He wants to get better, he’s a great worker and a great teammate. You know they want to get better and you know down the road, they are going to be a lot better.”

While the Stars season has been far from ideal. The fact is, they enter Monday’s game just two points behind the San Jose Sharks for the second wild-card spot in the conference, and have four games in hand on top of it. A win against the Flyers would and should bring them up to level.