ST. PAUL -- The Anaheim Ducks are looking to stop a three-game losing skid while the Minnesota Wild are hoping to win for the sixth straight time against the Ducks here at Xcel Energy Center.

Guillaume Latendresse is back in the lineup for the Wild after being out with a groin injury. He'll start the game on the fourth line, but could move up if his play or others' dictates it, said coach Mike Yeo.

Devante Smith-Pelly is a game-time decision for the Ducks. He missed the opener of this seven-game, 13-day road trip with the flu. Either he or George Parros, who is sporting a nasty cut under his eye after getting hit with an errant puck Wednesday in practice, could skate alongside Andrew Cogliano and Andrew Gordon on the third line.

Defenseman Kurtis Foster expects to be back in the lineup for Anaheim as well. Here's a projected lineup for both teams based on the morning skate and their previous games:

DUCKS
Patrick Maroon - Ryan Getzlaf - Corey Perry
Bobby Ryan - Saku Koivu - Teemu Selanne
Devante Smith-Pelly / George Parros - Andrew Cogliano - Andrew Gordon
Brandon McMillan - Maxime Macenauer - Matt Beleskey

Lubomir Visnovsky - Toni Lydman
Cam Fowler - Francois Beauchemin
Luca Sbisa - Kurtis Foster

Jonas Hiller is expected to start in goal with Dan Ellis serving as the backup.

WILD
Dany Heatley - Mikko Koivu - Cal Clutterbuck
Pierre-Marc Bouchard - Matt Cullen - Devin Setoguchi
Nick Johnson - Kyle Brodziak - Brett Bulmer
Colton Gillies - Darroll Powe - Guillaume Latendresse

Justin Falk - Marek Zidlicky
Nick Schultz - Clayton Stoner
Marco Scandella - Jared Spurgeon

Niklas Backstrom is expected to start in goal with Josh Harding serving as the backup.

PHILADELPHIA -- After scoring 19 goals last season, Evander Kane looked like a player on the rise, a rapidly developing power forward with speed and skill.

This season, however, it's been a bit of a struggle, as he has just 1 goal through his first seven games.

"There's more to the game than scoring," Kane said following yesterday's morning skate. "At the same time, I want to produce. I want to produce consistently, I want to produce nightly."

Jets captain Andrew Ladd said Kane's scoring woes are more endemic of the entire team, rather than one particular player not pulling his load offensively. As a team, the Jets are tied for 22nd with just 17 goals.

"There's lots of guys (not scoring)," said Ladd. "I've only scored twice. My line hasn't produced as much as needed. Evander has had a little trouble putting the puck in the net. He's still doing some good things. He's a strong skater, powerful, takes the puck to net."

Coach Claude Noel said the key for Kane, in his third season, still is learning how to best make use of his vast array of talent.

"What we're trying to do is teach him the way we feel is the best and most efficient way for him to play to be an effective player," he said. "For us, he has to play with some physicality and use his speed and drive and get to the net. He does that well."

Getting physical is something the 6-foot-2, 195-pound left wing enjoys -- he's second on the team with 20 hits.

"For myself, I like to be involved physically … in all aspects of the game," said Kane. "When I'm being physical and taking the puck to the net and getting lots of shots, that's one of the big things for my game."

In the Jets' last game, he was shifted onto a line with leading scorer Alexander Burmistrov and center Nik Antropov, and that trio will be together again tonight.

"I think he's been good," said Noel. "He was good with Burmistrov and Antropov, we moved him up there. He's like a lot of guys, trying to get on the board. The last few games he's played with some real physicality and some real energy and has been real good for us."

Contact Adam Kimelman at akimelman@nhl.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NHLAdamK

PHILADELPHIA -- The Philadelphia Flyers announcement that rookie forward Brayden Schenn has a broken left foot and will be out of action for 4-6 weeks.

In four games since being recalled from the team's AHL affiliate, the Adirondack Phantoms, Schenn was scoreless with a minus-5 rating and seven shots. He had been playing left wing on a line with center Danny Briere and right wing Wayne Simmonds.

The Flyers have called up forward Zac Rinaldo and defenseman Erik Gustafsson from the AHL to fill out the roster.

Rinaldo started the season with the Flyers and had 1 assist and 28 penalty minutes in five games prior to being sent down when Schenn was called up from the AHL and Jody Shelley finished serving his season-opening five-game suspension. In four AHL games, Rinaldo has a goal and an assist and just 11 penalty minutes.

Gustafsson, who was scoreless in three games with the Flyers last season, has 4 assists in eight AHL gamest this season.

Contact Adam Kimelman at akimelman@nhl.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NHLAdamK

PHILADELPHIA -- Tonight marks the first game of the Jets' season-long seven-game, 14-day road trip up and down the East Coast.

Following tonight's game, they'll head south for two games in Florida, and then come back north for four games in six nights against the Islanders, Devils, Rangers and Sabres.

Coach Claude Noel said the key to surviving so long on the road is not to think about how long the total trip is; rather, just focus on the next game.

"For us, you have to focus on the task at hand," he said. "You take one game at a time and go from there. We're not going to deal with the amount of time that we're away. We just deal with one game and try to win the game that's in front of us and go from there."

At 0-3-1 away from MTS Centre this season, picking up a win in a tough building -- even against a team like the Flyers that's coming on having just played on the road the night before -- would be a nice start.

"We understand it's a long (trip)," said team captain Andrew Ladd. "We're going to be playing in some tough buildings. At the same time, it's a good test for us, coming in here tonight and playing one of the top teams in the League and seeing what we have."

As the Atlanta Thrashers last season, they won three of four games against the Flyers, including both games in Philadelphia.

Ladd is hoping past results bode well for tonight's game.

"We played a lot of our best games last year against top teams," he said. "They seemed to bring the best out of us."

Contact Adam Kimelman at akimelman@nhl.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NHLAdamK

Here's what the lineups could look like when the Stars and Kings take the ice tonight in Dallas:

STARS
Steve Ott - Jamie Benn - Loui Eriksson
Brenden Morrow - Mike Ribeiro - Michael Ryder
Eric Nystrom - Vernon Fiddler - Radek Dvorak
Toby Petersen - Jake Dowell - Adam Burish

Alex Goligoski - Adam Pardy
Sheldon Souray - Stephane Robidas
Trevor Daley - Nicklas Grossman

Kari Lehtonen will start in net, backed up by Andrew Raycroft.

KINGS
Simon Gagne - Anze Kopitar - Justin Williams
Dustin Penner - Mike Richards - Dustin Brown
Ethan Moreau - Jarret Stoll - Brad Richardson
Kyle Clifford - Trevor Lewis - Scott Parse

Willie Mitchell - Slava Voynov
Rob Scuderi - Jack Johnson
Alec Martinez - Matt Greene

Jonathan Quick will be back in goal, with Jonathan Bernier serving as the backup.

For more on tonight's game, check out the preview here.

BOSTON – Forward Benoit Pouliot’s only three-point game of the 2010-11 season while he was with Montreal was against his former team, the Minnesota Wild.

So maybe Thursday night against the Canadiens will be the game Pouliot breaks out as a member of the Boston Bruins.

“I think everyone would agree with that,” said Pouliot when asked about the having extra motivation against a former team after the Bruins’ morning skate at TD Garden. “You face your old team, you obviously want to prove ‘Hey, you didn’t want to keep me, I’ll show you.’ But … it pumps you up even more, I think. Obviously it’s going to be my first game against Montreal, we have plenty of them all year long, so I see this as just a little boost at the same time. Just play the same way I’ve been playing and rack up the points.”

Unfortunately for Pouliot and the Bruins, the way he’s been playing hasn’t led to racking up points. He has yet to hit the score sheet in any form through eight games in black and gold. Assuming he’s in the lineup Thursday night, he’ll skate next to center David Krejci and right winger Nathan Horton.

Despite the lack of production, Pouliot, the No. 4 pick by Minnesota in 2005, says that Boston has been a better fit for him than Montreal.

“It’s just a matter of knowing what you do right or wrong, not hiding it – let the guy know and he’ll work on it,” said Pouliot while obviously comparing Bruins head coach Claude Julien to Montreal coach Jacques Martin. “And it’s something that Claude’s been good to me so far. He’s been talking to me. The assistant coaches talk to me all the time, video and stuff. For me personally, I just have to show up and work hard, be consistent every night. And I think in practice and in games, so far things have been going well. Maybe not the points, but everything else for me was to work hard, so it’s good so far. We’ve just got to start winning games and things will be OK.”

PHILADELPHIA -- Coming off last night's 5-1 loss in Montreal, the Philadelphia Flyers opted not to skate today, so there's no real guarantee on what their lineup could look like heading into tonight's game against the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets, meanwhile, will play the first game of their season-long seven-game road trip tonight, and had every player on the ice this morning.

Here is what the Flyers might look like, and what the Jets will look like tonight:

FLYERS
Scott Hartnell - Claude Giroux - Jaromir Jagr
Brayden Schenn - Danny Briere - Wayne Simmonds
James van Riemsdyk - Matt Read - Jakub Voracek
Maxime Talbot - Sean Couturier - Andreas Nodl

Kimmo Timonen - Braydon Coburn
Andrej Meszaros - Andreas Lilja
Matt Carle - Matt Walker

Coach Peter Laviolette was non-committal on his goaltender for tonight, but the guess is Sergei Bobrovsky gets the start, considering Ilya Bryzgalov played last night, in addition to the fact that he's given up at least four goals in three straight games.

The other change in the lineup could be Jody Shelley drawing in on the fourth line in place of Nodl.

JETS
Alexander Burmistrov - Nik Antropov - Evander Kane
Andrew Ladd - Bryan Little - Kyle Wellwood
Kenndal McArdle - Tim Stapleton - Blake Wheeler
Tanner Glass - Jim Slater - Chris Thorburn

Tobias Enstrom - Dustin Byfuglien
Mark Stuart - Zach Bogosian
Johnny Oduya - Randy Jones

Ondrej Pavelec will start in goal, with Chris Mason serving as the backup.

Ben Maxwell will be a healthy scratch, as Slater returns to the lineup after missing Monday's game with an upper-body injury suffered Oct. 22 against Carolina.

Eric Fehr also skated with the team; check back in a bit for more on him and his recovery from offseason shoulder surgery.

For more on tonight's game, check the preview here.

Contact Adam Kimelman at akimelman@nhl.com. Follow him on Twitter: @NHLAdamK

DALLAS -- When the Dallas Stars (7-2-0, 14 points) and Los Angeles Kings (5-2-1, 11 points) met on Saturday night at the Staples Center, it was the Kings who came away with a 1-0 victory thanks to a goal by Jack Johnson with just under five minutes remaining.

Even though the Stars came up on the short end of the stick that night in Los Angeles, first-year coach Glen Gulutzan and his players agree that was one of their best games on the young season.

In fact, that defeat was the lone blemish on a four-game road trip that saw the Stars finish at 3-1 with wins over the Blue Jackets, Ducks and Coyotes.

Considering how close the last meeting was with the Kings, there isn’t much Gulutzan would change heading into tonight's rematch at the American Airlines Center.

"No, not really," Gulutzan said. "They got a few faceoff plays. They ran on us and we have to be a little bit more aware of those and how we're going to defend those. They're so stingy. They've got good goaltending. They're a well-balanced group. They're structured. I think we just want to get into that same type of game that we were in Saturday night and hope for a different result."

In the last meeting between these two clubs, Dallas actually outshot the Kings, something they've done in only three of their first nine games this year and both teams were just 0-for-1 on the power play.

But it was Johnson's goal at 15:02 of the final frame that was the deciding blow in a close win for the home team. And while the Stars players are pleased with their effort just five days ago on the road, they also want another shot at Los Angeles, this time on their home ice.

"Yeah, I think it's a big test for us," Dallas defenseman Sheldon Souray said. "The last game we played on Saturday against these guys, we played well, maybe our best game of the year and we didn't get the win. To come right back and get a chance is a good test for our hockey club, a good test for our character. LA's the best team we've seen so far and we have to be at our best to have a chance against them."

Stars center Mike Ribeiro, who is currently second on the team with 7 points, agrees their last game against the Kings was one of their better efforts of the year. It's a performance he'd like to see replicated tonight in the Lone Star State.

"Yeah, we played good out there, a pretty intense game, probably our best game of the year," Ribeiro said. "We went at them but couldn't score. I think it was a really intense, physical and really good game to be part of. We'll come back and battle the same way."

Heading into tonight's contest, Dallas is a perfect 4-0-0 to start the season at home and the Stars are one of three NHL clubs that have yet to lose in their own building. The last time Dallas started the year 4-0-0 at home was in 1998-99, when it won the Stanley Cup.