Gameday Preview: Texas Stars v. Charlotte Checkers

Texas Stars 0-0-0-0, 0 pts, 0.000 #- Pacific Division

v.

Charlotte Checkers 0-0-0-0, 0 pts, 0.000 #- Central Division

October 14th at 7:30 PM

HEB Center at Cedar Park, Cedar Park, TX

Welcome back to hockey. Thank goodness.

As far as previewing the Texas Stars, I would refer you to yesterday's article that outlined things from head coach Derek Laxdal's perspective with a bit of my analysis mixed in.

(Credit: Christina Shapiro/Texas Stars)

Here are the lines as run yesterday in practice:

Ranford-Morin-Stransky
Ully-Dowling-DeFazio
Elie-Smith-Gurianov
Troock-McMurtry-Van Brabant
Fyten

Backman-Bystrom
Honka-Bodnarchuk
Ebert-Mangene-Stevenson
Karjalainen

Lagace
Desrosiers

The Charlotte Checkers have been in a major state of flux over their training camp, only really getting a true picture of their team in the past few days. Here are the lines that the Checkers settled on yesterday in their practice:

Here's the lines that the #Checkers were running today before taking off for Texas pic.twitter.com/FhzXQRdmBm

— Nick Niedzielski (@nickski15) October 13, 2016

“We feel like we have good balance,” Checkers head coach Ulf Samuelsson told gocheckers.com. “We should be able to play pretty much any line against any line our opponents put out. We have good balance and good defensive capabilities on all four lines.”

The one thing to watch for is how Charlotte handles the net in this back to back. They've got a rookie and one of the most tenured goalie in the league as their tandem. The veteran, Michael Leighton, comes over to Charlotte after a season in Rockford that saw him set the AHL career record for shutouts.

On the other hand, Alex Nedeljkovic beat out Daniel Altshuller for the backup role in Charlotte. Nedeljkovic was in Traverse City with the Hurricanes, so many of the Texas Stars and their coach have seen him already this season. He had a 28 save effort in the preseason against Lehigh Valley and collected a win there.

Charlotte 'has a plan' for the goalies this weekend but they aren't saying what that is.

In other notes, Texas is 7-0 in home openers and has lost the opening game of the season (home or away) just once.

Stars injury/call up report:
None.

Website: gocheckers.com
Checkers Social Media: Social Media
Coverage: Chasing Checkers
Twitter: @checkershockey
Twitter: @nickski15 (former Texas Stars intern, now Checkers Communications)