As we near the halfway point of the season, the Red Wings are starting to show who they truly are. Having gone 2-6-2 in their last ten games, they’re now sitting eight points out of the second wild card spot, but three points out of last place in the Eastern Conference. The standings are slippery and, at this point, they are more likely to fall than to climb.

Still, there is hope. Four wins isn’t that unlikely, but it’s counting on the other teams around them to lose. When those teams are Boston and Montreal, hope feels like it gets a little thinner.

Tonight, the Wings travel to Dallas to begin their unlikely climb. The Stars are currently sitting in the second wild card spot with 41 points and coming off a 2-0 victory over Nashville on Thursday evening. All is not well in Dallas, though, as team CEO Jim Lites called a press conference yesterday and ripped into his two star players. “Fucking horseshit,” are the words he used to describe their play.

So the big story tonight isn’t whether or not the Wings can beat the Stars. The big story tonight is going to be how Tyler Seguin and Jamie Benn respond to their boss’ very public and very harsh criticism of their play.

The Stars are 11-5-1 at home.

There’s been a bit of a shakeup to the Red Wings lines as Athanasiou has been moved to the top line and Nyquist has been moved to the second line. This is a great opportunity for AA. He hasn’t played with Larkin much this season, but Blashill warned him that he needs to be great defensively since he’ll be out against other teams’ top lines. Still, he thinks that AA can play at a higher level when paired with Larkin.

As for the second line, Nyquist and Vanek have had some good chemistry in the past. On the third line, Blashill hopes that putting Bertuzzi back there will get them back to grinding against the boards in the offensive zone. Personally, I’m a fan of this third line and I would love to see them get a little more time. On the fourth line, Wade Megan is in for Martin Frk.

Defensively, Ericsson and Daley have been put back together as both rookies have been relegated to the bottom pair. Cholowski has been in a bit of a dog house lately, as his time on ice has waned and his production has dried up. But Hronek has actually looked pretty good. This third pair is either going to be amazing or dreadful. There’s no in-between here.

At the time of this writing, the Stars hadn’t taken the ice for practice so there wasn’t any update on the lines. I would expect Seguin and Benn to come out with fire, though, after the criticism they’ve taken. They are leading the team in points (Seguin with 32 points, 11 goals) and goals (Benn with 11 goals, 30 points), but I guess the organization wants more out of them.

They are getting scoring support from Alex Radulov (11G, 29 P), but other than that, there isn’t much to write home about offensively. Jason Spezza, Miro Heiskanen, and John Klingberg have yet to hit the 20 point mark and no other Stars forward has more than six goals.

The Stars have a lot of kinks to work out if they want to be a serious contender, and yes they should be getting more out of Spezza and Benn, but responsibility falls on the entire team. They all need to hold themselves accountable to contribute when their star players aren’t.

What a disaster the Stars have on their hands right now.

Jimmy Howard vs. Ben Bishop

Expect Howard to get the nod tonight for the Red Wings. Howie hasn’t won a game since his back seized up during warm-ups earlier in the month. He’s really cooled off, posting a .903 save percentage over his last four games. That means, of course, that the Wings lost those four games. This team truly lives or dies based on Howard’s play. They really need a strong performance from him tonight.

Ben Bishop has been having quite the season. He has a .923 save percentage (career average is .918) despite having battled through some injury troubles. This tells me that he’s been the reason behind some of the Stars big wins. He’s been a little hot and cold lately, though. In his last five games, he posted a sub-.900 save percentage in three of them, a shutout, and a .968 save percentage. That’s kind of all over the map.

Puck drop is at 8:00 P.M. ET tonight from Dallas. You’ll be able to watch the game on Fox Sports Detroit or Fox Sports-SW if you’re tuning in from the Dallas area.

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