Ducks Gameday—will the Stars try to make one goal stand up again?

Anaheim Ducks (35-16-10, 3rd in west) at Dallas Stars (35-21-3, t-6th in west)

A quick glance at the (playoff-relevant) Pacific division race:

Anaheim, 61 GP, 35-16-10, 80 points
San Jose, 61 GP, 38-22-1, 77 points
Dallas, 59 GP, 35-21-3, 73 points

You gotta figure that somebody somewhere is grumbling that the Ducks, even though they have the fewest wins-per-games-played of this trio, still hold a 1 ½ game lead on the Sharks and the Stars, going by BoA’s baseball-style standings. Again, yay loser points! Including tonight, by the way, the Ducks and Stars have 3 games remaining (2 in Dallas), the Ducks and Sharks have 3 games left (2 in Anaheim), and the Sharks and Stars have 1 game left in Dallas.

During the past offseason, I wrote a pretty fun post about the Pacific Division: Circle of Life, wherein there was a circular logic about who was dominating whom in the Pacific division series. Well, for the Ducks, their main problem last year was against the Stars, who went 6-1-1 against the Mighty Ducks in 05-06.

This year, however, things seemed to have corrected themselves a bit in this series, the Ducks thus far having a 3-1-1 record against the Stars, and Dallas has scored but one goal against Anaheim in each of the last four contests. As a matter of fact, just for comparison’s sake:

J.S. Giguere vs. Dallas, regular season 06-07: 1.12 GAA, .960 s%
J.S. Giguere vs. Dallas, postseason 03 (Conn Smythe): 1.85 GAA, .936 s%

And I might as well point out also that Teemu Selanne and Andy McDonald have as many goals combined in this season series thus far (7) as the entire Dallas lineup.

Prediction: Ducks 4, Stars 1. Selanne, Getzlaf with a pair, and good ol’ Sammy P. closes it out.