The Dallas Stars host the New Jersey Devils on Tuesday at 8:00 PM ET, and the game arrives with two scorers driving the conversation. Jason Robertson is on a four-game run of multi-point efforts, while Arseny Gritsyuk has scored in five straight outings for New Jersey.
Robertson has 13 points in his last nine games and comes in after scoring twice in Dallas' 6-3 win over the New York Islanders on Sunday night. He also has 10 points in 10 career games against the Devils and is riding a three-game point streak in that matchup, giving him a clear chance to push the pace again against a team he has already bothered often.
The numbers behind Robertson are becoming part of the franchise record book. He has one assist to move past Brendan Morrow for 10th place among franchise forwards in assists, and if he produces another multi-point game Tuesday, he would become the first Dallas player since 1993-94 with five straight such outings. He already reached his 500th career point on Oct. 22 against the Winnipeg Jets, became the seventh-fastest U.S.-born player to reach that mark and the 13th player in franchise history to hit 500 points.
Gritsyuk has made his own case for attention. He enters Tuesday with seven points during his five-game point streak dating back to Oct. 15 against the New York Rangers, and he leads Devils skaters with six goals while ranking third on the team with nine points in 11 games. In two career games against Dallas, he has one assist and a plus-2 rating, so his production has not been limited to one stretch alone.
Dallas' last win also carried a reminder of how thin the roster has been. The Stars were without Matt Duchene, Sam Steel, Oskar Bäck, Radek Faksa and Esa Lindell against the Islanders, yet still found a way to score six times and pull out the win. Matthew Seminoff logged 8:53 in that game with two shots on goal and one hit, a small but useful snapshot of how Dallas has been piecing together its lineup while still generating offense.
The matchup also fits the broader shape of the season in Dallas. Glen Gulutzan has described the Texas Stars and the Dallas Stars as playing identical systems, which helps explain why call-up players can step into similar roles without much delay. What Tuesday really tests is whether Dallas can keep Robertson rolling and whether Gritsyuk can extend his scoring streak to six straight games, a mark that would place him in rare Devils company over the past 25 years.
If either streak continues, the game becomes more than a meeting between two good teams. It becomes another entry in Robertson's climb inside franchise history and another proof point that Gritsyuk's scoring touch is holding up against every kind of opponent.
