Roope Hintz<\/a>, who stayed home Tuesday when the team traveled to Minnesota for Game 3 of its Western Conference first-round playoff series.<\/p>\nHintz hasn’t played since sustaining a lower-body injury on March 6 in a game against Colorado and experiencing an unspecified setback in his recovery.<\/p>\n
Stars coach Glen Gulutzan previously said Hintz was unlikely to play in Game 3 on Wednesday night, and it now appears the center’s earliest possible return could be Game 5 when the series switches back to Dallas next week.<\/p>\n
“He’s not traveling. Like I said, Game 3, won’t be there. Game 4 (on Saturday), I would say is very doubtful,” Gulutzan said before boarding the team flight. “Hopefully by the time we get back, we’re in a good spot, and he’s in a good spot.”<\/p>\n
Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n
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The series is tied 1-1 after Dallas won 4-2 on Monday night. Minnesota opened the series with a 6-1 win.<\/p>\n
Gulutzan had said between Games 1 and 2 that Hintz hadn’t even returned to skating on his own.<\/p>\n
The 29-year-old Hintz, in his eighth NHL season, played for bronze medal-winning Finland and then missed the Stars’ first four games after the Olympic break because of an illness. He got hurt in his only game since, 6 1\/2 weeks ago against the Avalanche.<\/p>\n
Hintz remained down and reached at the back of his left leg after being engaged with Nathan MacKinnon<\/a> along the boards in the second period. Hintz put no weight on his leg while being helped off the ice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 21, 2026, 05:25 PM ET DALLAS — The Dallas Stars are still without injured top-line center Roope…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":557541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5117],"tags":[196,147,5278,5,4,197],"class_list":{"0":"post-557735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-stars","8":"tag-dallas","9":"tag-dallas-stars","10":"tag-dallasstars","11":"tag-hockey","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-stars"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116446950402445649","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=557735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/557735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/557541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=557735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=557735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=557735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}