DALLAS — Julius Honka is back in the lineup after a one-game game absence.
Honka was scratched in favor of Jamie Oleksiak during the Dallas Stars 5-4 win against the Arizona Coyotes on Thursday. At Saturday’s morning skate Stars coach Ken Hitchcock said Honka’s scratch didn’t have anything to do with his performance.
“We trust him every night, he’s not a big guy,” Hitchcock said. “So if he starts to wear down we pull him out. We don’t ever pull him out based on play … the next time we’ll have to think about that. Whether he’s just got to fight through that stuff.”
Scratching Oleksiak seems like an easy decision, especially after he struggled mightily against Arizona and had two blunders that led directly to goals.
“We didn’t do Jamie any favors by flipping him over to the [right] side,” Hitchcock said. “We just decided we’ll keep going lefty-righty. There is so much speed in the league that to play the right side you’ve either got to have quick feet or a quick stick. So, we’ll keep him on the left side and keep putting him in there. We’ve liked a lot of his game, and he had two mental mistakes that can impact any player. We just think to do our whole team a favor and to do him a favor we need to keep him on the side that is natural rather than flip him back and forth.”
While Hitchcock said he’s going to get Oleksiak back in the lineup, that isn’t an easy move to make.
Marc Methot and Esa Lindell are minute-munching defenders on the left side and aren’t coming out of the line. That would likely leave Dan Hamhuis as the potential scratch, and Hitchcock has been very happy with Hamhuis work paired with Stephen Johns.
Sifting through Hitchcock’s quotes, a couple things stand out:
— Honka could finally be a full-time fixture in the lineup.
— If Oleksiak doesn’t fit on the right side, he might not fit anywhere in the lineup.
— If lefty-right is so important, an injury to one of the right-handed defenders could open up the door for Greg Pateryn to get into the lineup.
Hurricanes projected lineup
Teuvo Teravainen — Jordan Staal — Justin Williams
Sebastian Aho — Victor Rask — Elias Lindholm
Jeff Skinner — Derek Ryan — Brock McGinn
Joakim Nordstrom — Marcus Kruger — Janne Kuokkanen
Jaccob Slavin — Brett Pesce
Justin Faulk — Noah Hanifin
Haydn Fleury — Trevor van Riemsdyk
Scott Darling
Cam Ward
Scratched: Martin Necas, Josh Jooris, Klas Dahlbeck
Injured: Lee Stempniak (upper body)
Stars projected lineup
Jamie Benn — Tyler Seguin — Alexander Radulov
Devin Shore — Mattias Janmark — Jason Spezza
Antoine Roussel — Radek Faksa — Tyler Pitlick
Remi Elie — Martin Hanzal — Brett Ritchie
Marc Methot — John Klingberg
Dan Hamhuis — Stephen Johns
Esa Lindell — Julius Honka
Ben Bishop
Kari Lehtonen
Scratched: Jamie Oleksiak, Greg Pateryn, Gemel Smith
Injured: None
Status report
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.