Dallas Stars will host the Columbus Blue Jackets at the American Airlines Center on Tuesday. This will be the fourth and final meeting between the two teams during the course of the season. Out of the three games that have taken place so far, the Blue Jackets
have won two games while the Stars have won one.
The last and most recent game between the two teams was played on February 13 which witnessed the Blues Jackets winning the game 2-1 in the end with Captain Rick Nash scoring the winning goal.
The Stars are still in the running for the play-offs and they are just three points out of the play-off cut. The last game against the Anaheim Duck was a close and hard fought battle that saw the Stars emerging as 4-3 winners in the end.
“It’s desperation time,” Stars captain Brenden Morrow said. “We’ve been saying it for a week or two now, but realistically looking at the standings and the games left, we pretty much have to run the table … 97 points would give us a pretty good shot.”
The Stars have done the hard work and now they need to continue on the performances that they have bagged over the past few games. They have four games left in the season all of these games are against teams that are out of play-off contention. This gives
them a very strong chance of making their way into the cut.
However, the interesting fact is that if the Stars are successful in doing so, then they would knock out of the defending champions Chicago Blackhawks out of the eighth and final play-off spot.
“Usually when you win, you get on a roll here,” said forward Mike Ribeiro, who had a pair goals in Anaheim. “There’s no more ways to lose. We need to find ways to win and here we did. We got the bounces that we needed. We still allowed a few goals but the
way we showed up – I think we battled through and everyone played hard.”
The Stars have played 78 games during the course of the season out of which they have won 39 games in regulation time, 11 games in overtime to score a total of 89 points. On the other hand the Blue Jackets have played 79 games out of which they have won
34 games in regulation time, 13 games in overtime to score a total of 81 points.
The Blue Jackets are out of the play-off contention and the last performance that saw them losing 6-1 against the Blues Jackets pushed them to the 13th spot in the Western Conference. They will be looking to bounce back and come up with an impressive performance.