The St. Louis Blues are searching for more offense. So are the Dallas Stars.
They will carry the same goal — more goals, simply — into their matchup Friday night in Dallas.
The Blues suffered losses at Edmonton and Winnipeg by the combined score of 8-1 before heading to Texas. They are averaging just 2.4 goals per game, worst in the league.
“Goal scoring’s an issue,” Blues coach Jim Montgomery said Tuesday night after the Blues fell 3-1 to the Jets. “We’ve got to keep going to the hard areas and staying in the hard areas.
“We’ve got to hit the net; we don’t have to be perfect. The way we’re converging at the net 5-on-5 and the way we’re converging on the power play tonight, if we hit the net, there’s going to be rebounds there. Then we’ve got to win those battles in those hard areas.”
The Blues are missing playmaking center Robert Thomas due to a lower-body injury. Key forward Pius Suter has also been sidelined, forcing St. Louis to lean on rookie forwards Jimmy Snuggerud, Dalibor Dvorsky and Otto Stenberg.
Winger Jordan Kyrou scored his first goal since Dec. 1 in the loss at Winnipeg, connecting on a power play. He has a goal and three assists in his past five games after failing to register a point in his previous five games.
“Obviously, we’ve still got to work on scoring,” Kyrou said. “We’re not really scoring many goals right now and we’ve just got to keep trying to improve on that.”
The Stars returned home after the Blue Jackets shut them out 1-0 Thursday night in Columbus.
“We just didn’t execute on some of our chances,” coach Glen Gulutzan said. “We had a lot of good looks, a lot of good looks even late, breakaways and some two-on-ones.”
Dallas lost four of its last five games while scoring just three total goals in those defeats. But the Stars could get star winger Mikko Rantanen back after he missed the past two games with illness.
Rantanen leads the team with 63 points (19 goals, 44 assists).
“He’s still ill,” Gulutzan said Thursday. “He didn’t travel with us, so we’re hoping he’s better today and then can play (Friday).”
In Rantanen’s absence, rookie forward Justin Hryckowian played a bigger role as Gulutzan shuffled his lines.
Dallas will return to Jake Oettinger in goal after starting backup Casey DeSmith on Thursday in the first of back-to-back games.
“Just kind of going with feel and where the goalies are at,” Gulutzan said.
Oettinger has struggled this month while posting a 2-4-1 record with a 3.31 goals-against average and an .868 save percentage.
The Blues defeated Dallas 3-1 at home on Oct. 18 with Jordan Binnington making 18 saves and Kyrou, Snuggerud and Suter scoring the goals. Since then, Joel Hofer has supplanted Binnington as the No. 1 goaltender in St. Louis.
After playing Friday, these Central Division rivals will face off two more times before the Olympic break – including Tuesday in St. Louis.
