Blues, Stars looking to rediscover top form

The St. Louis Blues will try to regain their home-ice edge when the host the Dallas Stars on Saturday night. The Blues' 10-0-1 point streak at Enterprise Center ended Thursday night with a 4-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets. St. Louis still leads the Central Division by six points despite posting a 2-5-1 record in its past eight games overall.

"There's a lot of desperate teams around the league right now, trying to find their way, playoff spots, things like that," Blues coach Craig Berube said. "Hockey's tight right now. It's tough. We've got to dig in more. We have to have a better mindset going into games, being harder to play against. "It's a lot of playoff hockey going on right now. I'd like to see us get more of that mindset right now."

The Stars are entering the second night of a back-to-back set off a disappointing result. They blew a 2-0, second-period lead and took a 3-2 loss to the visiting Minnesota Wild on Friday night. Joel Eriksson Ek scored the game-winner for the Wild with 27 seconds left to play. Dallas has allowed 30 goals while going 3-4-1 in its past eight games. The Stars remain in third place in the Central, seven points behind the Blues and one point behind the Colorado Avalanche.

"We've got to get it through our heads that if we want to make the playoffs and want to make a run here, it's going to take a lot of hard work and a lot of mental toughness to do it," Dallas forward Blake Comeau told NHL.com. The Blues have also experienced some slippage with their team defense and goaltending. They have allowed three or more goals in eight consecutive games.

Since Dec. 27, goaltender Jordan Binnington has a 3.26 goals-against average and a save percentage of .880, far off his season averages of 2.65 and .910, respectively. Backup Jake Allen has lost three of his past four starts while allowing 10 goals in those defeats. "We're not that far off," Berube said. "We scored six goals the other night [Tuesday against the Carolina Hurricanes]. There's games where we score lots of goals or get enough goals to win, but there's three going in our net every night, and that's not good enough."

On the offensive side, Berube has been pleased with his team's ability to generate scoring chances. But converting those opportunities has been the issue. "We had 16 shots miss the net," he said. "What if you take five of them away? You might win the game. Who knows? It's little things. It's little things in all these losses that are getting in the way."

Earlier this season, the Blues beat Dallas 3-2 at home on Oct. 5 and 3-1 on the road on Nov. 29. Binnington won the first game in goal, stopping 27 shots, and Allen won the second with 31 saves. Since Ben Bishop played in goal for Dallas on Friday, making 27 saves in the loss, the Blues are likely to see Anton Khudobin in the nets. Khudobin hasn't faced the Blues this season, but he has a 2-0-1 record against them with a 2.29 GAA and a .927 save percentage.

This Saturday meeting will be the first of three games between the rivals in February. "I don't think we played up to our standards, so we've got a lot of work to do," Stars defenseman John Klingberg said, according to NHL.com.

--Field Level Media

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)