Gameday Preview: Stars at Chicago Wolves, Game 6

Texas Stars
46-27-3-4, 99 pts
#2 West Division
atChicago Wolves
49-24-1-6, 105 pts
#1 West Division
Stars lead 3-2

May 9th at 3:00 PM
Allstate Arena, Rosemont, IL

The Texas Stars return to where this series began for Game 6 in the series. They return with a 3-2 lead in the series and a chance to knock out the #1 seed Wolves and claim the West Division championship.

Texas played the game that they want to play on Friday night and it showed on the scoreboard. There were a lot of shots for the Wolves, but they many of them were low quality shots, the types of shots that are routine for the keeper. Coach Gulutzan was impressed with Krahn's 43 save performance but said, "Brent Krahn's still got some higher level games in his repertoire".

Texas will return two players to the ice from suspension in today's game as well. Garrett Stafford, who served a 3 game suspension for elbowing Kevin Doell in the face, and Warren Peters, who served a 1 gamer for boarding Spencer Machacek, will both be back in the lineup. Texas played well without them on Friday, but Krahn made the point, "Just because [Stafford and Peters] are back doesn't mean we can relax". If the Stars can keep the intensity from Game 5 and return those two key players to the ice, they have a great shot of overcoming the home-ice advantage for the Wolves and moving on to the West Conference Finals.

Texas is looking to maintain their game plan from the past few games. They played it well on Friday: only giving up one power play goal and scoring one of their own; keeping down the number of quality shots; and getting ahead early and maintaining it. "The hardest thing to do," said Coach Gulutzan after Game 5, "is put a team out [of the playoffs] on [their] home ice." But that's just what the Stars have to do if they are to advance. "A desperate team is a dangerous team," added Krahn. And Chicago is desperate.

Stars injury/call up report:
None.

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