Stephen Johns will miss Thursday’s game against the Edmonton Oilers with an upper-body injury.
Johns was injured on a high hit by Matt Duchene in a 5-3 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Tuesday. Dallas Stars coach Ken Hithcock confirmed John’s status on Wednesday.
With Johns out and back-to-back games coming, Hitchcock indicated that both Greg Pateryn and Jamie Oleksiak would play.
Hitchcock was highly complimentary of both defenders, particularly Pateryn who has yet to play a game this season.
“I got a feeling with a guy like him, he’s gonna come in the lineup and then we’re not gonna want to take him out,” Hitchcock said of Pateryn.
Pateryn has been in a tough spot this season, but handled it like a professional. You can read more about how he’s handled being the eighth defender in this story.
Hitchcock said there could be a couple changes on Thursday based on performances from Tuesday, but he did confirm that Ben Bishop is still the starting goalie.
Bishop and Hitchcock had differing opinions on the goalie being pulled on Tuesday, but Bishop said it’s in the past and it was just two competitive people trying to help the team.
Don Potsie says
Bishop’s screw ups were directly responsible for the first 2 goals and he looked quite bad and out of position on the
3rd one. Thats plenty of reasons to pull him out. I’m not impressed at all with his primadonna attitude criticising
Hitch for pulling him out, especially when he shod have prevented all 3 goals. I think the GM should be suspended for
whining publicly and bad mouthing his head coach, as they would do in several other sports
Don Potsie says
Nill should suspend Bishop for his diva attitude and for trashing the coach, is what I meant to say above.
He has set a really bad example by whining to the press about his coach’s decision.