Gameday Preview: Stars v. Oklahoma City Barons

Texas Stars
0-0-0-0, — pts
#— Western Conference
v.Oklahoma City Barons
0-0-0-0, — pts
#— Western Conference
September 27th at 7:00 PM
Cedar Park Center, Cedar Park, TX

The team that ended the Texas Stars' season last May is the first to visit the Cedar Park Center this fall for a preseason contest. Four months ago, Texas's last game at the Cedar Park Center sent them off to the Cox Convention Center with a tied series at one all. Up to that point, Texas had two one goal games in the series. The Stars would be outscored by a 16-4 margin in three games in Oklahoma and come home defeated.

Of course, this is the preseason and many of the players who were on the ice for those two clubs last year are not yet assigned to the AHL by their clubs. Still more are no longer with those teams. Gone are Matt Fraser, Reilly Smith, and Joe Morrow on the Texas side. OKC has lost their top tender Yann Danis, who really held them in some of those tight games.

But again, this is the preseason. Look for both clubs to ice mostly rosters of ECHL tryout and AHL-ECHL bubble type players. The Barons have a lot of guys in camp, 44 to be precise. Texas only has a few more than a typical regular season roster at 24.

Jack Campbell is expected to get at least one game this weekend while Pat Nagle and Josh Robinson could figure into the second. My bet would be that Robinson starts one of the two games, as Texas has never seen him play a minute in the AHL. When they signed him as the fifth tender for the organization, they showed that they were confident in his ability to perform at this level if needed. Preseason is a good time to test out that trust.

Lines should be similar to the Stars practice lines over the past few days with the exception of Toby Petersen at defense:
Hedden-Dowling-Rapuzzi
Ranford-Nigro-Bennett
Montgomery-Wathier-Vause
McKenzie-Peters-Mercier

Button-Wrenn
Elbrecht-Hegarty
Gaunce-Labrie
Petersen-Boutet

Comments

  1. What about this roster? Not really impressive, I see some guys are still with Dallas and will be back. Any idea what the final roster might look like? It looks like some of the vets will have to take on all roles, like 2010-2011, which ended bad.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for commenting. Remember to keep it civil. Using a name will help us identify replies and build a Texas Stars community.