Dallas Stars vs Pittsburgh Penguins

Who: Dallas Stars (8-5-0, 13 points, 3rd place Central Division) @ Pittsburgh Penguins (6-8-2, 14 points, 6th place Metropolitan Division)

When: 7:00 p.m. ET

How to Watch: SportsNet Pittsburgh, streaming on ESPN+ and streaming in the Dallas metro area on Victory+

Pens’ Path Ahead: Busy week starting today with four games in six days before the schedule breaks a little bit. The Pens have to weather the storm tonight and then really should start climbing with games against Detroit (Wednesday), @Columbus (Friday) and San Jose (Saturday) in the near future. The Pens play seven of their next eight games at PPG games starting tonight, with the quick jump over to Columbus this week being the only road game until after Thanksgiving.

Opponent Track: October was a great month for the Stars, but then they had to jump the Atlantic Ocean for two games against Florida over in Finland on Nov 1+2 — Dallas lost both of them. Upon returning home they beat Chicago but lost in their last game out 4-1 to Winnipeg (though in fairness, just about everyone is losing to the Jets these days). Still, that makes for a 1-3-0 November after starting the season 7-2-0 in October.

Season Series: The Pens don’t take their trip to Dallas this season until all the way on April 5th.

Hidden Stat: Pittsburgh will be looking to snap a three-game losing streak to Dallas. The Penguins are 5-1-1 in their last seven home games against the Stars and they’re 7-3-1 all-time at PPG Paints Arena (stick tap Pens PR).

Getting to know the Stars

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Jason Robertson - Roope Hintz - Evgenii Dadonov

Mason Marchment - Matt Duchene - Tyler Seguin

Jamie Benn - Wyatt Johnston - Logan Stankoven

Sam Steel - Mavrik Bourque - Colin Blackwell

DEFENSEMEN

Miro Heiskanen / Matt Dumba

Esa Lindell / Nils Lundkvist

Thomas Harley / Ilya Lyubushkin

Goalies: Jake Oettinger and Casey DeSmith

Potential Scratches: Oskar Back, Brendan Smith

IR: none

—Marchment took a puck in the face from his own teammate last game but was able to come back to the game. He’ll be looking like a hockey player tonight.

—Jake Oettinger will be coming into today in a foul mood, he was pulled after giving up four goals to the Jets by the middle of the second period. Oettinger has won six games against teams that didn’t make the playoffs last season but has lost all three he’s played against playoff teams. Considering Pittsburgh falls into the first category he’ll be looking to get back on track.

Player stats

(via hockeydb)

—Wyatt Johnston scored 24 goals as a rookie in 2022-23 and upped it to 32 tallies last season, a bit of a surprise to see a slow goal-scoring start with only 1 in the first baker’s dozen games of 2024-25.

—Logan Stankoven is the type of mid-second round pick (47th overall in 2021) that every team hopes they can find that diamond in the rough and see him rise to an NHL impact maker in barely any time at all.

—Matt Duchene has had a very interesting career path, he floundered around in the middle of it from COL to CBJ to OTT to NSH but got back on track with the Predators. Now in his second season with the Stars, he’s settled in as a quality component of a good team.

—It’s been a great start in Dallas for former Penguin DeSmith so far. He had a meh season in Vancouver last year in his one season there but given the goaltending market was able to secure a three-year contract in free agency with the Stars.

And now for the Pens

Infographic courtesy of Pittsburgh Penguins PR

Projected lines

FORWARDS

Drew O’Connor - Sidney Crosby - Rickard Rakell

Michael Bunting - Evgeni Malkin - Bryan Rust

Jesse Puljujarvi - Lars Eller Noel Acciari

Anthony Beauvillier - Blake Lizotte - Valtteri Puustinen

DEFENSEMEN

Matt Grzelcyk / Kris Letang

Marcus Pettersson / Erik Karlsson

Ryan Graves / Jack St. Ivany

Goalies: Alex Nedeljkovic, Joel Blomqvist, Tristan Jarry

Potential Scratches: Ryan Shea, Cody Glass (concussion) and one of the goalies

IR: Matt Nieto (knee surgery), Kevin Hayes (week-to-week upper body injury)

—There were some injury updates yesterday from Mike Sullivan, and they were mostly poor. Kevin Hayes was downgraded from day-to-day to week-to-week with what looks like an undisclosed upper body injury that will have him out of the lineup for a bit. There was no timetable on Cody Glass, but he was diagnosed with a concussion from Thursday night’s game. Glass is not officially on IR, but that is only a technicality at this point since the team doesn’t need the roster spot opening up.

—The return of Bryan Rust from injury has signaled the end of the Crosby/Malkin 5v5 union. Now that the Pens have a little more talent they can split the star centers to create two scoring lines and used the above configurations in practice yesterday. That presents very big opportunities Drew O’Connor and Michael Bunting to elevate around the best forwards on the team. Pittsburgh is going to need these players to start producing more than they have been so far (both have two goals and one assist this season at 5v5).

Three goalie shuffle

It appears the Penguins will be carrying three goalies for the time being on their NHL roster.

Sullivan mentioned the team will be scripting out “a game plan where we keep these guys all in the mix”. A starting goalie for tonight was not announced a day ahead of time but clues might trickle out from how the goalie activity goes at the morning skate.

Killin’ it

The Pittsburgh penalty kill has been really good in the past few weeks.

From Pens PR:

The Penguins rank fifth in the NHL in penalty kill percentage at 86.7%. Over the last 10 games dating back to Oct. 20, the team is first in the NHL, going 26-for-28 in that span:

Highest PK% Since Oct. 20, NHL:

Team PK PK%

Pittsburgh 26-28 92.9%
Philadelphia 26-28 92.9%
NY Rangers 24-26 92.3%
Nashville 35-38 92.1%
Washington 32-24 87.5%