Head coach Pete DeBoer addressed the media on Monday in Frisco.
DALLAS - The Stars finalized their opening night roster, but it remains to be seen if a few key players will be available for Thursday night’s game against the Blues at American Airlines Center.
Forwards Roope Hintz, Wyatt Johnston and Radek Faksa are dealing with injuries that have prevented them from getting in the kind of work that every player hopes for during the preseason.
Head coach Pete DeBoer knows that places the collective group at a disadvantage with the start of the regular season fast approaching, but that’s just the way hockey goes sometimes.
Hintz, Johnston and Faksa participated in Monday’s practice at Comerica Center wearing no-contact jerseys, so there’s still some healing to do across the board.
“You want to start developing some chemistry in your lines and pairings. You can’t do that until you’re healthy. You want to get some chemistry in your special teams. You can’t do that until those guys are all out there,” said DeBoer. “If we don’t have those guys, [we need to] make sure our team game’s in a good place, that we’re ready to play on Thursday, and not leave points on the table here early in the season.”
Despite the fact that all three players remain questionable at this point for the highly-anticipated contest in front of the Stars' faithful, DeBoer is adamant that his club still made the most of the past several weeks to adequately gear up for another campaign.
He believes the group is in a good place.
“It was a really competitive camp. When we went into camp, we had a few goals, and one was obviously to get the team ready. The injuries kind of threw a wrench into some of those plans, especially some of our lineups. I would’ve liked to have had an opening-night lineup over the last couple of games, but we didn’t get a chance to do that. That’s stuff you can’t control. The other goal was to make sure we gave everyone a real good opportunity to play - the returning veterans that are fighting for positioning on the team, but also the young guys, putting them in positions that they could walk out of camp and know they had a real good opportunity to show what they could do. I think we got both of those things accomplished,” explained DeBoer. “I thought all the key young guys got plenty of opportunity to play - play on special teams, play with NHL players - and our returning veteran guys all got to play in situations, penalty-killing, power play, that some of them maybe haven’t done before to try and show their stuff, so there was lots of opportunity in camp.”
As far as battling the Central Division rival Blues is concerned, the Stars’ bench boss insists lessons learned from the recent exhibition contest on Oct. 5 can provide valuable intelligence moving forward.
Dallas was blanked 4-0, but the coaching staff extracted plenty of information from the footage.
“Every time you play a team, you get a good pre-scout. I think the fact Craig Berube’s been there for years, it’s not a new coaching staff, we’ve got a good book on them and what they do, and they’ve got a good book on us,” said DeBoer. “I think we both know what to expect Thursday night, but it’s always nice to have some recent tape on a team, and that was basically their opening-night lineup pretty much the other night, so that’s helpful.”
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