Gameday Preview: Stars at San Antonio Rampage

Texas Stars 6-6-0-1, 13 pts #10 Western Conference

at

San Antonio Rampage 4-8-0-0, 8 pts #15 Western Conference

November 13th at 3:30 PM

AT&T Center, San Antonio, TX

The Stars come to San Antonio for another Sunday matinee game this afternoon. The same two teams played last weekend with great result for the Stars, a 4-0 win. Texas comes into this game playing their third in three nights. San Antonio is on one day's rest.

For the Rampage, this has to have been a maddening stretch. The club is winless in their last three, starting with last week's loss to the Stars. The Panthers have returned wunderkind goalie Jakob Markstrom to the club, but he has lost both games with the team (both against Lake Erie). Really, beat writer Tony Uminski sums things up best:

If these guys were paid on production, they’d be living under a bridge.

Other than Eric Selleck, NO ONE seems to care enough to drop the gloves.

No one seems to care enough to hit anyone for that matter. These Rampage have brought to mind the true meaning of AHL, Anti-Hitting-League.

Aggression is extinct when this team is on the ice.

The only individual statistical category the Rampage show up on top is Nolan Yonkman’s 10 minor penalties — tied for third.

Nobody is doing anything.

It's scathing and also a reminder that while Texas is not enjoying its usual success, it is certainly not without positives. A strong power play has had a power outage in the past two games and could look to get back into the swing of things against an abhorrent PK from the Rampage (#30 in the league at 72.1%).

Uminski points to the infamous oh-for-November stretch in 2008-9 that got Greg Ireland fired. The Rampage have a tough time with the month of November historically. They are 1-3 this year and went 1-6-1 in 2009 and 0-16-1 in 2008. The only good year in recent memory is 2010, when they went 8-4-0.

Despite all this, the game against San Antonio is not one to look past. Texas will have a team on its hands that has all the pieces but just isn't clicking at 100%. Sound familiar? Stars fans know firsthand how dangerous that combination can be once things come together.

Stars injury/call up report:
Larsen (callup)

Website: sarampage.com
Blog (unofficial): Rampage with Tony U.
Blog (unofficial): Runnin' With The Herd
Twitter: @SARampage
Twitter: @SARampage_Voice (play-by-play for SA)