The Need to Knows

The Time: 7pm PST

The Place: Climate Pledge Arena in Beautiful Seattle, Washington

Place to Watch: KING 5, KONG, KHN Networks, Amazon Prime, Victory+, SportsNet 360

Place to Listen: KJR 93.3-FM

An Opposing Viewpoint: Defending Big D

Game Preview

Welcome back, everyone! How’d your Tuesday night go? Get some stretches in? Make some progress on the dinner? Plan your comebacks for family members monopolizing discussion at the dinner table?

Well, I’ll tell you what the Dallas Stars did on their Tuesday night: they beat that ass red raw in Edmonton.

Ever since their tight 2-1 win over Seattle, the Stars have truly come alive in Dallas; winning 5 of their last 7 games, and now nursing a goal-scoring streak from their young phenom; Jason Robertson. They’ve won 4 of them by at least 3 goals scored by a player in Victory Green, and 3 of those were wins by at least 4 goals or more.

Yes, the Stars may seem big and bright right now, but there is a catch; playing defense at them at all might be a significant change of pace from how they just played their last game. Edmonton gave Dallas unparalleled access to their net-front; the kind you usually only get from playing for the Oilers yourself. Further, they had to still keep up the pace against Leon Draisaitl and Connor McDavid, meaning that at any time, those multi-goal leads could’ve evaporated. While they did get their chances against teams like the Islanders and Flames, both teams made life a lot harder for the Stars, and as such were able to eke out wins.

Really, the one thing they absolutely need to do in order to survive this game is to play the squeakiest, cleanest game anyone’s ever played. The Kraken’s PK is already suffering quite a bit, and Dallas’ 2nd in the league power play is not a stress test that needs repeat experiments.

Still, it’s a pretty important time for the Kraken; just about every team in the Pacific Division with the exception of the Kings plays tonight, and the mythical cut off for what a team “should be” for the rest of the year has historically been American Thanksgiving. Granted, with the sheer amount of Parity in the league and in this division in specific, I think we could probably push it back to around Boxing Day, but the hope of significant, meaningful improvement in the standings is just too tantalizing to ignore. Getting another two points to keep the pace is critical.

So just before we sit down and cram our faces, we can enjoy a delightful little hockey game.