DALLAS — Dallas Stars coach Dave Tippett this morning said that veteran winger Jere Lehtinen, who suffered a leg injury in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals against Detroit, is “questionable” to play in tonight’s 6 p.m. MDT Game 3 of the series at American Airlines Arena.
“He got some treatment,” Tippett said after the Stars” morning skate. “We’ll see if he can take warmup tonight. And if he gives us the go, he’s a go. If not, he’ll be on the sidelines. He’s close, but we’ll see.”
Tippett indicated that if Lehtinen can’t play, the Stars would insert into the lineup either B.J. Crombeen, who doesn’t have a point in five playoff games in this postseason, or Chris Conner, who has yet to suit up in the playoffs.
The Stars are down 2-0 in the series after a pair of losses in Detroit, and that has left the Red Wings riding an eight-game winning streak in the postseason — also including the final two games of the first-round series against Nashville and the four-game sweep of the Avalanche.
The Stars’ top line of Mike Ribeiro, Brenden Morrow and Lehtinen has accounted for one goal in the first two games. Ribeiro lost his poise in the final stages of Game 2 at Detroit and retaliated to a butt end from Detroit goalie Chris Osgood with a two-handed slash over the net to Osgood’s chest, but was wasn’t suspended for tonight’s game. He, Osgood and Dallas winger Steve Ott all were fined.
As was the case with the Avalanche in the previous series, the Stars have had trouble winning faceoffs and Detroit has dominated possession of the puck, and Dallas hopes to change that tonight at home.
“You’ve got to start with the puck there,” Tippett said of the faceoffs. “But the other thing it comes down to how well you check.
“When you check, you get the puck back. And it’s a situation where when you get the puck, you have to do good things with it. You have to keep it. When you don’t have it, you gotta go get it. I’ve told our players and some of the media around here, I told a Jack Evans story, my first coach in Hartford, I had gone about 20 games. And I was a checker. I had gone about 20 games without scoring.
“Jack came over to me one day and said, ‘Tip, I love the way you’re checking. You’re checking great. Let me give you a bit of advice, when you check a guy you don’t have to give it back to him just so you can check him again. Right?’
“So the work ethic and everything is fine but you have to be able to do things with the puck. When you have it, do good things with it, execute well with it. When you don’t have it, you have to check well to get it back.
“That’s one of Detroit’s strengths. They’ve got people who can do good things with the puck but they have to work hard to get the puck back. Those are situations where I like some of our work ethic, I like some of our checking. Other times we can do better. But I’d like to see us do more quality things on the execution part with the puck.”
Detroit coach Mike Babcock hopes his teams responds on the road as it did against the Avalanche, and not as it did against Nashville — against whom the Wings lost Games 3 and 4 on the road.
“I mean, we’ve been through it a couple times, just even in the last couple of years,” he said. “We went to Calgary up 2-0 (last year). Came home tied. Went to Nashville 2-0. Came home tied.
“The bottom line is what we’ve done is kind of held serve. They’re going to come into their building, they’ll be excited. The first 10 minutes is going to be really important. But the overall game and our plan and how we play. And our big thing is just to maintain the level of play, not to let it fall off. … If we fall off and play different, then that makes things harder for us. They’re going to have energy. They’ve got their crowd. They’ve got their building. It’s natural for you to have energy. And, yet, we like our team. We like the way we’re playing and we believe.”
For the second consecutive game, the Wings tonight will be without Johan Franzen, who has conscussion-like symptoms and is said to have been suffering headaches for a couple of weeks — or including when he was racking up nine goals in the four games against Colorado.
