Carolina Hurricanes vs. Dallas Stars: Lineups and Game Hub

The Carolina Hurricanes (24-8-3) will play host to the Dallas Stars (12-12-10) Saturday night in the first of a back-to-back series at PNC Arena.

The game will also be the start of an eight-game homestand for the Hurricanes as they look to go on a bit of a run to help them in the Central division race for the top seed.

Carolina has been very good at home this season, with an 11-1-3 record and with PNC Arena allowing a bit more fans into the building, the energy that those extra fans could bring may be a boost for the Canes.

The Hurricanes have won all four meetings so far against the prior Western Conference champions who have struggled this season. Even despite a few key injuries, the Stars just haven’t been able to close out games with 10 overtime/shootout losses.

The Stars will be entering tonight’s matchup having snapped a three-game losing streak with a 4-1 win over the Nashville Predators Thursday night.

The Hurricanes are entering off of a 4-3 bounce-back win against the Chicago Blackhawks on Thursday night that saw a thrilling finish in regulation.

Alex Nedeljkovic will get the start in net for the Canes tonight. March’s Rookie of the Month has an 8-3-2 record this season with a 0.927 save percentage and 2.05 goals against average.

With the return of Petr Mrazek seemingly around the corner, it will be interesting to see how the Hurricanes address their goalie rotations moving forward, but for tonight it will be Ned starting with Reimer backing him up.

Hurricanes Projected Lineup

Brock McGinn - Sebastian Aho - Martin Necas
Andrei Svechnikov - Vincent Trocheck - Jesper Fast
Nino Niederreiter - Jordan Staal - Warren Foegele
Cedric Paquette - Steven Lorentz - Jordan Martinook

Jaccob Slavin - Dougie Hamilton
Brady Skjei - Brett Pesce
Haydn Fleury - Jake Bean

Alex Nedeljkovic
James Reimer

Scratches and Injuries: Teuvo Teravainen (concussion symptoms), Petr Mrazek (right thumb)

Taxi Squad: Jake Gardiner, Morgan Geekie, Joey Keane, Beck Warm

The Stars announced that goaltender Anton Khudobin, who was anticipated to start tonight, entered COVID protocol and won’t be available. He was the only Star to enter protocol so far.

Instead Jake Oettinger will start in net for Dallas. The rookie netminder has a 5-3-6 record this year with a 0.909 save percentage and 2.34 goals against average.

Here is how the rest of the Stars lineup is projected to go based on their last game in Nashville:

Stars Projected Lineup

Jason Robertson - Roope Hintz - Joe Pavelski
Jamie Benn- Radek Faksa - Dennis Gurianov
Andrew Cogliano - Jason Dickinson - Blake Comeau
Tanner Kero - Rhett Gardner - Ty Dellandrea

Esa Lindell - John Klingberg
Jamie Oleksiak - Miro Heiskanen
Andrej Sekera - Mark Pysyk

Jake Oettinger
Landon Bow

Scratches and Injuries: Anton Khudobin (COVID protocol), Stephen Johns (upper body), Ben Bishop (lower body), Joel Kiviranta, Alexander Radulov, Tyler Seguin, Joel Hanley
Taxi Squad: Tanner Kero, Justin Dowling, Nicholas Caamano, Taylor Fedun, Joel E’Sperance