What to watch for as Stars cap road trip at Kings

LOS ANGELES -- The Dallas Stars will be hoping to pull out of a late-February funk as they visit the red-hot, retooling Los Angeles Kings at Staples Center tonight to close out a three-game West Coast road trip.
Here's what to watch for.

Salvage time for the Stars

The Stars are 0-2 on this West Coast trip having been beaten 5-2 in San Jose on Sunday and blanked Wednesday night in Anaheim, 2-0, in spite of out-shooting the Ducks 41-17.
Avoiding a winless trip will be important on a couple of levels, not the least of which is that every point frittered away at this stage of the season is a point closer to missing the playoffs.
Now, the Stars -- in spite of losing three of four and looking out of sorts for much of this stretch -- still hold down third place in the Central Division. But another loss puts that positioning in jeopardy.
On the psychological level, if the Stars can match their effort, if not their finish from Wednesday's hard-fought loss -- their best-overall performance of the past couple of weeks -- and get rewarded with points, that will reinforce the message that head coach Ken Hitchcock is sending, and that is playing well almost always precedes collecting wins.
"The process of winning, we took a big step (Wednesday) -- a positive step, and we've got to continue down that path," Hitchcock said Thursday morning.
Veteran defenseman Marc Methot said the team seems in a good frame of mind heading into another pivotal test in spite of the lack of points in recent days.
"The mood this morning is surprisingly pretty good. I don't anyone's kind of hanging their heads, and I can tell you there's times where if you're not playing well, you can feel it in the dressing room," Methot said. "That's not the case right now. We did have a good game (Wednesday). Didn't get the bounces. We wanted to score a couple of goals, which would have been the difference. I think if we can build off (Wednesday) that's a plus.
"A lot of things can change in 24 hours. We're just going to try and make sure we're prepared as much as possible for tonight and, hopefully, we'll get rewarded for it."

The irksome details

Yes, the Stars provided a much better accounting of themselves in the first period against Anaheim. And they still ended up trailing 1-0 after the first, thanks to a Ducks power-play goal that came after a needless holding penalty assessed to Antoine Roussel -- the first of two minors he would take on the night.
That makes nine times in the last 11 games that the Stars have given up the first goal of a game. Now, when you don't score, it seems inevitable you're going to give up the first goal at some point, and that brings us to another element of the Dallas game that has to change, and that is finishing the job offensively.
Wednesday's game swung on a long stretch of 5-on-3 play in favor of the Stars early in the third period, where they could not dent veteran Ryan Miller, who was superb. But the Stars didn't do themselves any favors with allowing Miller to see many of the shots even on the extended two-man advantage.
Yes, they hit three posts during this chunk of the third period, but whatever the reason, the fact is a team chock-full of good-to-great offensive players couldn't find the tying goal, which then led to a shorthanded goal by Ryan Getzlaf to put things out of reach.
The Stars have scored four times in their last four games, during which they are 1-3-0, and so, must find a way to break through against the Kings.
As we noted prior to Wednesday's game
, it starts with the big guns. Jamie Benn has one goal in 11 games. Alexander Radulov has, likewise, one goal in 11 games, while Tyler Seguin has no points in four games and just one power-play goal in his last 20.
"It's not a fun thing when you're losing," Radulov said. "It's just one of those things you have to know that when the things are going well for the team, and everybody's on the same page and working hard and good things happen …
"But it's not like it's just coming from the whatever -- the sky or air. You earn that thing. You earn that thing during some amount of time, you're working and you earn that thing. The thing that we have to understand as a team, I think all of us, when we had that situation, you can't let it go. You've got to grab it and hold as long as you can."
But when you let go, you end up slipping and wind up in a hole.
"To get out of that is so hard, and we all know that," Radulov added. "But I think we've got a good group -- good team -- and we understand that and (Wednesday) was a good game overall, even if we got the loss."
From the coach's perspective, it's not just the traffic that will lead to goals, but the mindset of funneling everything to the net.
"I think before you can get bodies there, you've got to have pucks there, so I think the first thing is the obligation -- is put more pucks there and then, when the players know, then it becomes an automatic response: they're going to the net," Hitchcock said. "So we need to have an idea (that) we're going to funnel more pucks into that area, so we can have more bodies."

More lineup shuffling

The Stars will be without Martin Hanzal, who headed back to Dallas today for further medical evaluation on his ongoing lower-body issues. He played 4:09 over seven shifts Wednesday, and then, did not return for the balance of the game.
Hitchcock said there would be an update in a couple of days, but it sounds like there is little expectation that Hanzal will be rejoining the lineup anytime soon, and specifically, not for Saturday's looming clash with Winnipeg in Dallas.
"I can't really tell you an exact date until we get back on Monday and figure out where he's at," Hitchcock said. "I don't really know the time frame on it right now, to be honest with you."
That's disappointing for Hanzal, who has struggled from the moment he arrived in Dallas before training camp to stay healthy. Having signed a three-year deal with the Stars in the offseason, he was a key figure in the plan to revamp the Stars identity as being an extremely-hard-to-play-against team, and his standing as a top two-way center -- when healthy -- was also a reason the Stars looked to be a team built for the rigors of Western Conference playoff action.
In some ways, though, perhaps moving on at least in the short term, without wondering on a daily basis whether Hanzal would be healthy enough to play, will bring some constancy to the lineup.
Look for Gemel Smith to return to the lineup, and we wouldn't be surprised if center Jason Dickinson gets a call once again to join the big club from the Stars' American Hockey League affiliate in Cedar Park in the next couple of days.
Smith, who's been impressive in his last couple of outings, should play with Radek Faksa and Tyler Pitlick, while Roussel moves to a line with Brett Ritchie -- coming off a strong game against his brother, Nick, of the Ducks -- and Jason Spezza, who presumably will move back to center tonight.

Lehtonen a King vanquisher?

And so it falls to Kari Lehtonen, as it has so often this season, to arrest a slide or produce an effort when the circumstances suggest a win is improbable or unlikely.
We go back to the start of an Eastern trip on Martin Luther King Day, a matinee in Boston against a scorching-hot Bruins team. Lehtonen got the start and the win and the Stars went 3-0-1 on the trip, which proved a catalyst to moving solidly into a playoff spot.
Lehtonen has produced those kinds of performances all season. He has won five straight starts and is 7-1 in his last eight starting assignments.
Over those eight games, he's allowed 15 goals. With the team struggling offensively, and trying to rediscover its own team identity, the cards are once again stacked against Lehtonen, which as it turns out might be a dynamic Lehtonen prefers.
"Well, I think we're going to need the same or better," Hitchcock said of his stellar backup netminder. "I think this is one of the most sturdy teams in the National Hockey League. They discourage you offensively because they know how to play -- they check well, they have strong gaps. So you're not going to get a lot of scoring chances, and then, it's your job to prevent some from happening. He's going to have to be good early, and then, hopefully, we can keep building on what we did (Wednesday)."
Lehtonen will have to be wary of the Kings penchant for traffic and driving the net.
"He is going to have to make saves," Hitchcock said. "They create a lot of scoring chances with their bulk and their size."

Kings retooling

It's been a busy time for the Kings and general manager Rob Blake, who added veteran defenseman Dion Phaneuf for veteran winger Marian Gaborik less than two weeks ago.
It seemed a curious deal given that Phaneuf is under contract until 2020-21 with a $5.25 million cap hit, which is a lot. But all Phaneuf has done is come in an score three times in four games -- all on the power play. And while Phaneuf's former team, the Ottawa Senators, are in fire-sale mode, he was very good for the Sens in their march to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final last year.
"I'm not surprised. He's a competitor," said Methot, who played in Ottawa with Phaneuf before being claimed by Vegas in the expansion draft and then dealt to Dallas last June.
"One thing I can take away from my experiences playing with him, he's a great guy -- well-liked in the locker room and he's a competitor," Methot added. "He just seems to be always so prepared. You watch the way he carries himself in the locker room and it translates onto the on-ice performance."
Rugged forward Nate Thompson also came over in the deal and should be a nice fit for head coach John Stevens. And more recently, the Kings added third-line speed in the form of Tobias Rieder, who came over from Arizona and is expected to play his first game for the Kings tonight (the teams also swapped backup netminders with Scott Wedgewood coming to Los Angeles, and Darcy Kuemper going to the Coyotes, although the Kings called up former Dallas prospect Jack Campbell presumably to back up Jonathan Quick tonight).
The Kings have won three in a row, and while technically still outside the playoff bubble, they are tied for the second wild-card spot in points and are just two points back of third-place Anaheim in the Pacific. They're about to get Jeff Carter back from injury in the coming days and, well, they're starting to look very much like the Kings circa 2012-2014 when they won two Stanley Cups and went to a Western Conference final.
This story was not subject to approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club.
Scott Burnside is a senior digital correspondent for DallasStars.com. You can follow him on Twitter @OvertimeScottB, and listen to his podcast.