What to watch for as Stars face Golden Knights in rubber match

The Dallas Stars will be looking to erase the memory of two forgettable losses against top Central Division foes when they entertain the surprising Vegas Golden Knights on Saturday night.
Here's what to watch for.

The week that was

Saturday's game marks the third game of the week against top-ranked Western Conference foes for the Stars.
Having been dumped 5-2 by Nashville at home on Tuesday and blanked 3-0 by St. Louis in St. Louis on Thursday, Saturday looms as a salvage project. As in it's pretty critical for the team to salvage one of the three games that, at the beginning of the week, were seen as good test cases for a team that had won five in a row -- and seven of eight -- at the time.
Tuesday's loss, which featured four second-period goals by the Central Division-leading Predators (actually, tied with St. Louis for top spot, but we digress), stopped a five-game home win streak for the Stars, and they're still an impressive 10-3-0 at home.
And while the two losses weigh heavily this week, the Stars are still 5-2 in their last seven, which is not nothing.
The Stars will welcome Antoine Roussel back to the lineup after he missed the past four games with an illness. He said Saturday morning he's good to go. We think of him as an energy guy, but head coach Ken Hitchcock said Roussel is more than that.
"He has way more than energy he has good play. He's strong on the puck. He's really good penalty killer. He's really good (at) positional play. He's got energy at the puck," Hitchcock said. "But he's not a reckless player."
Roussel looks to rejoin regular linemates Radek Faksa and Tyler Pitlick as a unit that has been given more and more responsibility in recent weeks, because of their strong play on both sides of the puck.

Second time a charm?

For the second time this week, the Stars will be facing a team on home ice that is coming off a game the previous night. Didn't work out so well Tuesday as the Predators were the more disciplined, opportunistic team in dumping the Stars 5-2. So any kind of advantage that playing a team on the second half of back-to-backs was negated fairly early in that contest.
The Golden Knights are coming off a 4-3 shootout win over Nashville on Friday night, in which they had to rally to tie the game in the last minute of regulation. So it would behoove the Stars to try and take advantage of that fact with an inspired start -- something that hasn't been a given for a Dallas team that too often this season has taken time to get into the flow of games.
During their recently departed five-game win streak, they scored first in all five games. Hardly a coincidence. Both Vegas and Dallas have fared well in first periods overall with Vegas plus-8 in first-period scoring, and the Stars plus-5.
Neither team has fared well in the third period, though, as the Golden Knights are minus-9 in third-period scoring. The Stars are the same, having given up nine more third-period goals than they've scored.

Back to Ben

As expected, Ben Bishop will return to the Dallas net after missing Thursday's game with a sore back sustained after Tuesday's game.
Bishop will be looking to bounce back after allowing three goals on 15 shots in just 24:26 of play against Nashville. As Bishop noted during postgame, it was not his best effort, During the critical second Nashville goal, he was caught behind the net as a dump-in deflected off a player into the slot for an easy tally to pad the Predators' lead early in the second period.
That being said, Bishop has been stellar over the past month or so, and especially at home, where he is 5-1 in his last six games at American Airlines Center.
Bishop was very good against Vegas last week when the Stars dealt the Golden Knights -- just their second home loss of the season a 3-0 shutout.

Changes as promised

With two disappointing losses to the cream of the Central Division -- dropping the Stars' record to 0-6-0 against Nashville, St. Louis and Winnipeg this season -- Hitchcock has once again tinkered with his forward combinations in the hopes of generating some scoring, in general, and better balance in offensive production.
Alexander Radulov, with 21 points in his last 20 games, drops off the Jamie Benn/Tyler Seguin trio and onto a line with Jason Spezza and Mattias Janmark, who has scored in just one of his last 13 games (he scored twice against Chicago last Thursday).
Devin Shore moves up to a line with Seguin and Benn, who is mired in his own personal goal-scoring slump with zero goals in nine straight games.
"It's open for debate whether it works, but we won't be afraid to change back," Hitchcock said. "It's more to try to see if we can get other people going. And I think that it really helps us balance things out and see if we can do it, but it's not cast in stone. It seemed like a good yesterday and it seemed like a good idea this morning, so we want to try it."
The shuffling of lines is understandable, but there's only so much that Hitchcock and his staff can do. At some point, the scores have to score. Pretty simply stuff.
The same can be said for the power play, which has also gone dormant of late, scoring just once in the last nine games. That, and a lack of discipline that has forced Hitchcock to overuse some of his penalty killers, especially with Martin Hanzal out of the lineup, has seen the team's special-teams play overall take a bit of a dip.
"How can I say this? Ninety percent, we like -- a lot," Hitchcock said. "We feel like we're getting closer scoring-wise on the power play, and we're right there killing penalties."

Golden nights ... err ... Knights

When the Golden Knights made history, playing their first-ever game at American Airlines Center to kick off the 2017-18 season back in early October, few would have imagined we'd be talking about the expansion team as a possible playoff contender.
And yet, here we are more than a third of the way through the season, and the Golden Knights are dogging the Los Angeles Kings for top spot in the Pacific Division (they are four points back with two games in hand heading into play Saturday).
Most impressive has been the Knights' ability to stay out of the ditch (to steal a phrase popular with Hitchcock). They have lost three in a row only twice this season, have enjoyed two five-game win streaks and are currently on a three-game win streak.
And they've done almost all of that without top netminder Marc-Andre Fleury who is just now trying to get back to game action after sustaining a concussion and hasn't played since Oct. 13.
What has also been impressive about the team, apart from their resiliency, is that they have managed to avoid soul-sucking losing streaks with middling to below-average special teams.
In short, you can start penciling in Gerard Gallant's name on the Jack Adams Trophy as coach of the year, and looking at potential playoff partners for mid-April.
Go figure.
This story was not subject to approval of the National Hockey League or Dallas Stars Hockey Club. You can follow Scott on Twitter at @OvertimeScottB, and listen to his Burnside Chats podcast here.