The streaking Dallas Stars have won five straight games heading toward the Olympic break. The reeling St. Louis Blues have lost seven of eight.
The Central Division rivals are traveling in opposite directions ahead of their game on Wednesday night in Dallas.
“I think we want to take care of business before the long break,” said Dallas goaltender Jake Oettinger, who has won his last five starts.
The Stars began their streak by defeating the visiting Blues 3-2 on Jan. 23, then again 4-3 in St. Louis four nights later.
Dallas won just three times during a 14-game span before starting their streak at the expense of St. Louis.
“I think you can see that we’ve had meetings here about we lost a bit of our edge and our physicality over the last (stretch),” Stars coach Glen Gulutzan said. “We had it early and then when you get out to a good start and then after Christmas you think it’s going to come easy, but that’s not the way it works.
“We had to get that back and we’ve got it back … it makes a difference in our play.”
The Stars are coming off a 4-3 overtime victory over the visiting Winnipeg Jets on Monday night in a game decided by defenseman Thomas Harley’s goal.
“I think it’s great,” said Harley. “I think we’re earning our wins now, which is even better. That stretch we went through when we weren’t winning was tough. We didn’t deserve to win and now we’ve worked our way out of it, and we’re a better team now.”
Forward Matt Duchene has five goals and two assists in his last five games. Winger Jason Robertson had four goals and four assists in his last seven games.
The Blues are coming off a dispiriting 6-5 loss at Nashville on Monday night. They raced to a 5-1 lead, then buckled when the Predators began their comeback.
“Once (the Predators) scored their second goal, I didn’t feel the same amount of confidence with our players with the puck,” St. Louis coach Jim Montgomery said. “We started turning pucks over that I thought we had time and space, and then it just started to snowball.
“Then after we regrouped in between periods, (the Predators) were rolling. They were feeling it, and we didn’t win enough battles to be able to gain lines and protect the lead that we had.”
On the positive side, the Blues have shown more life offensively while scoring 20 goals during their last five games. Jordan Kyrou (three goals, five assists in five games), Pavel Buchnevich (three goals, five assists in six games) and Jake Neighbours (two goals, three assists in five games) have been driving play.
But the Blues haven’t played well enough defensively to capitalize on that scoring uptick. Their collapse at Nashville represented a low point for their difficult season.
“Just learn from that as best as possible,” Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said. “It’s frustrating, obviously, to lose games, but you’ve got to learn from that and make sure that moving forward we take care of those games.”
