The Dallas Stars (15-12-2) restart their season against the Florida Panthers (22-7-4) on Thursday looking to please their fans with another home win.
Bookmaker Bovada has the odds at -115 for Dallas to get the opening goal here and at -130 for Florida to start the scoring.
※ Current Odds Date & Time: January 5th, 8:00 P.M. (EST)
With the Stars sitting just sixth in the Central Division, they can’t be happy with the way their season has gone. With that said, only a few can match their 11-3-1 home record. It’s almost like head coach Rick Bowness has two teams at his disposal as Dallas owns a very poor 4-9-1 road record.
The Big Three of Tyler Seguin, Jamie Benn and Alexander Radulov have struggled this season, but the Stars offense has looked very dangerous on home ice and they even put seven goals past a solid Minnesota team in their last outing.
The team’s general scoring record isn’t too great with a 2.69 goals-for average, but their power play has been very strong at 26.7 percent. Joe Pavelski is among the league leaders with six power-play markers and eight different players have scored at least two goals with the man advantage.
Pavelski’s line, which also includes Roope Hintz and Jason Roberton, has been on fire after some early struggles and we should see them in the middle of everything again on Thursday.
The Panthers have had a number of hot lines throughout the season and it’s helped them to average the second-most goals in the league (3.85), but they have some lineup issues ahead of the trip to Texas. Sam Bennett is suspended and Sam Reinhart was added to the COVID-19 list at the start of the week.
Florida had very little trouble without the duo on Tuesday in a 6-2 win over Calgary, but the center position is currently looking a bit weak. It puts a bit more pressure on first-line center Aleksander Barkov, but the Panthers have to be careful with not overworking him after the team captain missed all but three games last month with injuries.
Barkov was held off the score sheet by the Flames on Tuesday, but that was only his fourth pointless game in 20 appearances this season. Had he managed to stay healthy for the whole season, we might be talking about a very special campaign. He’ll look to get back into scoring form on Thursday and the Stars will have their hands full trying to stop him.
