With 13 games left in the regular season, the grind of the AHL schedule finally caught up with the Texas Stars, who entered Friday night’s match without three regulars in their lineup. The shorthanded roster, though, seemed to simply provide the opportunity for others to step up.
And step up they did, as Stars goaltender Remi Poirier shut the door in Chicago with a stellar 43-save outing to help Texas secure a 3-0 win over the Chicago Wolves Friday night at Allstate Arena.
The shutout was Poirier’s third of the season and brought the Stars’ magic number for playoff qualification down to just one. With the victory, Texas can punch their ticket to the postseason while idle on Saturday if the Iowa Wild loses in any fashion to the Ontario Reign.
Chase Wheatcroft, Kole Lind and Emilio Pettersen scored for the Stars, with Pettersen’s shorthanded goal serving as the highlight of a masterclass 7-for-7 performance from the Stars’ penalty killing unit.
Texas opened the scoring against the run of play on an excellent all-around shift from Wheatcroft to create a goal from nothing. After a strong zone entry, Wheatcroft shifted to center ice, drawing two defenders and a hooking penalty. With Chicago defenders staggered, Wheatcroft sent a clean pass to the point for a shot that cycled on the left side of the ice, giving him the space to park himself on the right post where he was unguarded and free to pot his own rebound and put the Stars up 1-0.
Texas was able to capitalize again at 11:54 of the second period when Lind jumped on an errant D-to-D pass in the Chicago zone and tossed a shot at Dustin Tokarski who was not prepared to make the stop and give Texas a solid 2-0 lead heading into the third period.
On the Stars’ fifth penalty kill of the game, Petterson put the game out of reach for Chicago when his aggressive forecheck forced a turnover behind the net and allowed him to carry the puck in front of the net and wait out Tokarski for the final tally of the night.
After kicking off their five-game Midwest road trip with a win, the Stars will wait and see if their postseason ticket will be punched on Saturday night before a Sunday rematch with the Wolves.
Tonight’s lines
Blümel-Hryckowian-McKenzie
Hughes-Hyry-Lind
Pettersen-Becker-Wheatcroft
Seminoff-Romano-Ertel
Looft-Petrovic
Capobianco-Kyrou
Karow-White
Poirier
Injuries, scratches and notes
Krys, Stranges (injury)
McDonald (lower body injury)
Bergsland (scratch)
Tonight’s attendance was 6,105.
AHL Gamesheet - Texas at Chicago - March 21 2025
Why can't we get more information on Injured Players, Antonio Stranges is a very popular player, is he out for the rest of thhe year, or is it day to dAY?
ReplyDeleteIt's a good and fair question.
DeleteUltimately, it has to do with three factors:
1. The AHL does not have a roster limit so players do not have to be put on IR to clear roster room. This means players can be "scratched" for multiple games without anyone knowing it's an injury.
2. The Texas Stars are not among the teams in the league that readily share injury information in the media without prompting. Some teams choose to issue injury updates on Twitter, etc. but Texas does not.
3. 100 Degree Hockey is a collection of part-time reporters, none of whom do this for a living. We aren't always able to get the injury info that we would need to be perfect conveyors of this information.