the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars squared off four times

DALLAS — Last season www.officialhurricanes.com , the Minnesota Wild and Dallas Stars squared off four times with each team winning twice.And on Friday night, these Central Division rivals will renew their rivalry with a game at American Airlines Center, the first of five meetings this season.The Wild (2-2-2, 6 points) are 0-2-0 on the road but Minnesota defeated Arizona 2-1 on Tuesday in the Twin Cities.Article continues below ...Minnesota has a minus-5 goal differential, but center Mikael Granlund sees an easy fix to that early trend.“We are spending too much time in our d-zone and just defending,” Granlund said after practice Thursday. “We got to be better with the puck.”Friday could mark the Wild debut for forward Matt Read, who was recalled from AHL Iowa on Wednesday. Read, 32, played 437 games for Philadelphia between 2011 and 2018 before signing a one-year Carolina Hurricanes T-Shirts Authentic , two-way contract with the Wild last July.It’s a homecoming for the veteran forward who played collegiately at Bemidji State in northwest Minnesota.Read skated on the Wild’s top line alongside Jason Zucker and Eric Staal during practice Thursday.“Obviously, they’re talented. They’re natural goal scorers,” Read said of Zucker and Staal. “They know how to put the puck in the net. It’s going to be a great opportunity to make sure I go out there and give them the puck as much as I can.”Dallas (3-3-0, 6 points) last played Tuesday, losing 3-0 at the New Jersey Devils, making the Stars 0-2-0 on a quick two-game road trip that also saw them lose 4-1 at Ottawa on Monday.First-year Stars coach Jim Montgomery would rather return to the road to atone for those losses, but also sees the benefit of starting a three-game homestand on Friday.“I actually wish we were going back on the road so we could address the road mentality we want to develop,” Montgomery said after practice Friday. “We need to get better at our team identity. We’re really focusing on our play without the puck. We think we’ve made a mistake as a staff trying to get too dynamic offensively too quickly and it’s taken away our players’ aggressiveness. We’re thinking too much on the ice.”Montgomery said Ben Bishop will start in goal against the Wild. He also said forward Valeri Nichushkin (undisclosed) will not play Friday but that veteran defenseman Marc Methot, out Tuesday with general soreness and forward Alexander Radulov Carolina Hurricanes Hoodies Authentic , held out of practice earlier this week, will both play.This will be Dallas’ first look at the Wild, a foe Montgomery compares to a famous boxer.“They’re an extremely resilient team. They’re kind of like Muhammad Ali, they rope-a-dope you,” Montgomery said. “They give you a lot of possession time, they seem to be giving up shots, but they’re not giving up a lot of quality shots. You can tell they’re a veteran team. They’re really comfortable being behind 1-0, 2-1. They seem to come back, and they wear you down over time by rope-a-doping you.” For all the good things the Nashville Predators did last season to win the Presidents’ Trophy Carolina Hurricanes Hats Authentic , there was one nagging problem, which they’ve yet to solve in the first three games of the 2018-19 season.The Predators can’t stay out of the penalty box, and it came back to bite them Tuesday night in a 3-0 loss to Calgary that spoiled their home opener. Continued penalty issues could spell doom on Thursday night when they host the Winnipeg Jets in the teams’ first meeting since a riveting Western Conference semifinal last spring.After playing a reasonably clean game with just three minors and one shorthanded situation in the season opener on Oct. 4 at the New York Rangers, Nashville (2-1-0) drew five minors and had to kill off four power plays in a 4-3 win Saturday night at the New York Islanders.Article continues below ...The Predators then took three minors in the first 25 minutes Tuesday night, and the Flames converted two of those into goals to set the tone. Forced into chase mode the rest of the way, Nashville couldn’t solve up-and-down goalie Mike Smith, who was on the up side of a 43-save shutout.“We did good things, we just couldn’t find a way to score and that was definitely frustrating,” Predators center Ryan Johansen said. “We wanted to get the building involved and we were trying Custom Carolina Hurricanes Jerseys , but tonight wasn’t our night.”Nor was it Nashville’s night the last time it saw Winnipeg, which was on May 10 in Game 7 of a entertaining, back-and-forth series between the league’s two best regular-season teams. The Jets chased Pekka Rinne with two goals on shots Rinne badly wanted back, then pulled away in the third period for a 5-1 win that wrapped up a 4-3 series victory and their first trip to a conference final.While these aren’t the same teams that skated up and down the Bridgestone Arena ice on a warm spring night, they’re still mostly intact. And the home crowd is sure to remember that Winnipeg ended what they presumed would be a run to the Stanley Cup.“It’ll probably get hyped up more just because of what happened last year, and I think that’s just the way things go from previous years when teams come back and they reconnect the next year,” Predators coach Peter Laviolette said. “There’s always more of a hot button to it, but at the end of the day it’s a new season.”One that the Jets (2-1-0) have started with great expectations after their best NHL season. They played their home opener as well on Tuesday night but unlike Nashville, they sent the home crowd out of the rink in a good mood after dispatching Los Angeles 2-1.The final score didn’t reflect Winnipeg’s domination. The Jets owned major advantages in shots on goal (39-17) www.officialblackhawksproshop.com , 5-on-5 shot attempts (56-33) and faceoff wins (37-21).“We generate chances, zone time, from a certain type of mentality of what pucks we shoot and which ones we don’t,” Winnipeg coach Paul Maurice said. “When we shoot the ones we want, we’re able to carry and maintain our speed in the offensive zone.”