When the puck drops Tuesday night at the MCS Centre in Winnipeg, it will kick off a back-to-back between the teams that will wrap up Thursday night in Dallas—and, regardless of the outcome, the Stars are approaching the next couple of days as a good test against a desperate team ahead of the playoffs.
The team has only played through one such home-and-home, back-to-back two-game stretch of schedule to this point, against the Blues in December.
“That was a good test right there, as close as you get to a playoff series in the regular season,” said Stars captain Jamie Benn, per Mike Heika of the Dallas Morning News. “That’s the same here, where I think you have two teams who are really going to play hard, intense hockey and then one game builds on the other.”
The Stars are coming off three straight losses, but they won four in a row—including games against the league’s best, Washington and Chicago—before that.
“It gives you a similar feel,” forward Jason Spezza said. “There will be bad blood that spills over from game to game, just like in the playoffs. They’re a big team and they tried to play us pretty physical the last time we played them, so that could be good for us. It’s a challenge, because they are desperate, so we need to match that.”
