By William Espy
The Blue Jackets look to rebound following a tough 2-1 loss against Tampa Bay on Monday tonight against the Dallas Stars. Dallas is a very tough team to play against and has broken out as one of the top teams in the league this year. Led by superstar forwards Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin, the question is not whether the Stars will score however it is how much they will score.
Since entering the league in 2000, the Blue Jackets have struggled against the Stars posting an all-time record of 19-26-6 against them. Their record in the American Airlines Center is a lackluster 10-13-2. However the last ten games in Dallas have been kind to the Jackets who have a 6-3-1 record during this time. On top of that, since joining the Eastern conference the Jackets have not lost in Dallas at all posting a 3-0-0 record.
Last season, both games ended with a score of 4-2 with the visiting team leaving with two points, however this was when the Jackets had Sergei Bobrovsky available to play, a luxury they unfortunately do not have tonight. While on the topic of goaltenders, last night in Tampa Bay Joonas Korpisalo made his NHL debut and impressed pretty much everybody watching him. He posted a 2.07 GAA and a .931 save percentage. It can also be said that neither goal was his fault to begin with as they came off of inopportune turnovers from Alexander Wennberg.
Dallas is currently first in the NHL with 101 goals for to this point in the season while the Blue Jackets are in the middle of the pack with 75. Goals against is another beast entirely however, Dallas is 17th with 78 while the Jackets are a bottom feeder in 28th with 94.
PROJECTED LINEUPS
DALLAS
Benn-Seguin-Nichushkin
Janmark-Spezza-Eaves
Roussel-Eakin-Sharp
Sceviour/Moen-Fiddler-Hemsky
Goligoski-Klingberg
Oduya-Demers
Nemeth-Benn
Lehtonen
Niemi
COLUMBUS
Jenner-Johansen-Saad
Hartnell-Wennberg-Atkinson
Calvert-Dubinsky-Foligno
Campbell-Karlsson-Clarkson
Johnson-Savard
Murray-Bodnarchuk
Tyutin-Prout
Korpisalo
No comments:
Post a Comment