Boston Bruins: 4 Keys to Saturday's Matchup with the Dallas Stars

Once with seven losses on their tab before Halloween, the Boston Bruins have a chance to enter the new year as one of only two NHL teams still with a single digit under their “L” heading. In addition, a win over the Dallas Stars on Saturday night will also tie them with Chicago as the fastest club to reach 50 points on the year, requiring a mere 35 games to do so.

By exploiting the welterweight Stars’ outstanding vulnerabilities and not letting a certain foil-fisted foe get the better of them physically or emotionally, the Bruins can put a final chip of sweetness on top of their most memorable calendar year in generations. The four most crucial items to watch for are as follows.

Not-so Warm Welcome Back

Dallas’ presumptive starting goaltender, Kari Lehtonen, has only put in one appearance since recovering from a groin injury that kept him out of commission for a month. And in Thursday’s bout with the Columbus Blue Jackets, he repelled 25 out of 28 shots and allowed a goal per period, en route to a 4-1 loss.

If he couldn’t get re-acclimated in time to handle one of the league’s shallowest offenses, he will need to order an extra case of mental sharpness on speed delivery for his next outing against Boston and its balanced, peerlessly productive strike force.

Naturally, on their end, the Bruins would be best served by doling out everything they saved in Phoenix on Wednesday. Patrice Bergeron, Chris Kelly, Benoit Pouliot and Tyler Seguin all stood out for failing to land a single shot on Coyotes goaltender Jason LaBarbera.

As it happens, the Stars rank last on the NHL leaderboard with an average of 32.4 shots against per night, while the Bruins have thrown a median of 32.8 shots on net per game. Assuming a maximum effort from the visitors, Lehtonen should be in for a fiery baptism at best.

Best Versus Rest

Four of the six Stars’ skaters to have appeared in each of their first 36 games also constitute the top of the team’s scoring charts. And there is no circumventing the fact that the input of Jamie Benn, Loui Eriksson, Mike Ribiero and Michael Ryder is critical to Dallas’ position on the postseason borderline.

One point behind Los Angeles for eighth in the Western Conference with two games in hand, the Stars have a 15-5-0 record when Eriksson contributes in a tangible fashion, but are 5-10-1 when he is scoreless. They are 8-4-0 when the top gun Ryder tallies a goal and 8-11-0 when he is kept scoreless altogether, including a five-game pointless streak for himself and his team November 11-19.

When Ribiero is on the score sheet, Dallas is 14-7-1, but 6-8-0 when he is not. The Stars are 14-6-1 when Benn contributes and 6-9-0 when he is stifled.

It doesn’t help the Stars’ cause that reliable defenseman and top puck-slinger Sheldon Souray remains day-to-day with an ankle injury sustained last Friday.

New Test For Thomas?

Head coach Claude Julien could, by all means, let the hot-handed Tuukka Rask scrape the blue paint for a third consecutive outing. Although, doing so would effectively mean prolonging Tim Thomas’ game-action drought to at least 16 days, carrying on to Wednesday’s visit to New Jersey.

As it is right now, Thomas has had his longest breather of the season, his last extramural engagement being a December 19th win over Montreal. That is enough in itself to make him the logical choice for Saturday.

Thomas can be trusted to demonstrate fresh legs in this situation, but he along with his defensemen will want to prepare to muzzle some starving dogs. The Stars’ offense started their previous game in rabid fashion, running up a 19-9 edge in the first-period shooting gallery but failed to reward themselves when a 1-1 tie devolved into a 4-1 loss to the lowly Blue Jackets.

First Night, Fight Night?

The Stars’ last two visits to TD Garden on November 1st, 2008 and February 3rd of last season kind of speak for themselves at this point. Those two games sandwiched a comparatively uneventful Boston victory at the American Airlines Center in October 2009.

Hard to predict any amount of extracurricular activity in this one, but it is safe to assume that Dallas’ Steve Ott will play some sort of reckonable role. The hard-nosed forward is perfectly capable of pitching and averaging a little less than 19 minutes of ice time per game, which means he will regularly be in action trying to curb any one of Boston’s forward lines.

But in the event Ott steps over the line, unless Milan Lucic, Shawn Thornton or a defenseman is out there and willing to respond with reasonably prudent timing, the Bruins might as well focus on flustering the Stars into penalty trouble.

If a Boston skater is going to sacrifice himself for five minutes in the box, he should only engage Ott if the Dallas enforcer is already presumed to be going off for another infraction.