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Stars Have Plenty of Lineup Questions Ahead of Friday's Game Against Rangers

taylor newby
·2 min read

After a rocky week, the Dallas Stars now face some serious questions headed into Friday night's home game against the New York Rangers.

Injuries now coupled with the flu ravaging through the locker room have forced the Stars to call in reinforcements already. However, last night in the 5-3 loss against the Toronto Maple Leafs, Mason Marchment left the game early after taking a cross-check in the back from Conor Timmins. There was no penalty called on the play.

It is unclear if that cross-check is the reason Marchment was unable to finish the game, and head coach Pete DeBoer was not able to elaborate on the injury after the game. DeBoer said any diagnosis would require more testing.

The Stars have had particularly good luck when it comes to injuries over the last couple seasons, and even if there was an injury that came up, the team has had the depth to fill the void. This year has been a bit of a different story.

A couple weeks ago, it was announced that Tyler Seguin would be out for 4-6 months due to surgery on his left hip. Then, Matt Dumba was placed on the injure reserve retroactive to December 8th with an upper-body injury. Per Puckpedia.com, his expected return is December 23rd.

In Seguin's absence, they have been able to use their extra forward without calling anyone up from the Texas Stars, but if Marchment has to miss any time, it would require a call up from Cedar Park. Dallas did briefly call up Justin Hryckowian but he did not see any playing time.

With the flu taking out Nils Lundkvist and Thomas Harley for the past few games, there is no telling who may be too sick to play come Friday or Monday against Utah, which is the final game before the Christmas break. Dallas called up Alexander Petrovic to play alongside usual seventh defenseman Brendan Smith on the third pair Wednesday, and rookie Lian Bischel has been thrown into a top-4 defenseman role after only a handful of NHL games.

It might be until just before the game when Dallas can finalize their lines and defense pairings on Friday night.

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