Gameday Preview: Stars v. Oklahoma City Barons

Texas Stars 12-8-0-0, 24 pts #6 West Division

v.

Oklahoma City Barons 13-7-1-1, 28 pts #3 West Division

November 30th at 7:30 PM

Cedar Park Center, Cedar Park, TX

The Oklahoma City Barons make their first regular season visit to the Cedar Park Center this evening for the season's third match-up between the two teams.

In the last battle in the series, Texas and OKC fought a defensive match that ended in the shootout with the Stars emerging victorious. Texas lost their first matchup against the Barons in a 6-1 drubbing at the Cox Convention Center.

Oklahoma City has the right combination of offense and defense to keep them where they are in the standings. In their last 6 games, they have allowed more than 2 goals only once. In the same stretch, they have scored 3 or more goals 5 times. The only time those two stats didn't match up: Texas's 2-1 victory two weeks ago.

In the last 4 games since the two teams met, it's been the Jeff Deslauriers show for the Barons. Since Martin Gerber's call up to Edmonton, Deslauriers has been called on in every Barons game. Backup Bryan Pitton has not played in a game in over a month, his last start being a 5-2 loss to the Marlies on October 23rd.

Texas, in the meantime, has split their games 3-2-0-0 since the last matchup with Richard Bachman taking the lionshare of the load and doing a pretty good job at it. The rookie has a 1.94 GAA and a .932 SV%, good for #6 in the league among all goaltenders.

Texas will look to continue their luck at home. Texas has had a vastly home-based schedule with an 8-5-0-0 record at home and a 4-3-0-0 record on the road. With three more home games to come, all of this home-cooking will come back to bite the Stars at some point. With any luck, the team will continue to mature as a group and the early home scheduling will benefit the team in the long run.

Stars injury/call up report:
Krahn (day-to-day, lower body)
Roman, McCulloch (undisclosed)
Blindenbacher (call up)

Website: okcbarons.com
Blog (unofficial): NewsOK's Barons Hockey
Blog (unofficial): Oil Field Hockey
Twitter: @OKCBaronsHockey