For the second time in six days, the Blackhawks and Stars have a hockey date arranged, with Thursday’s events shifting venues to the United Center.
Chicago won that prior meeting 4-3 with the aid of the shootout, with rookie Nick Lardis providing the winning tally during the final gimmick portion of the game to give the Hawks’ a much-needed pair of points, as that was one of Chicago’s three victories in the month of December and only win in the last nine games.
Everything mentioned in the preview from the prior matchup between these two teams still holds true, as Dallas remains second to Colorado in the Central Division and slightly ahead of Minnesota, with all three of those teams pulling away from the rest of the NHL standings pack. The Stars are currently expressing some of the regression that their underlying numbers suggested were possible, as the team has lost three straight after a stretch of 17-3-1 in November and December. Dallas enters this game having lost 4-1 to the Sabres on New Year’s Eve, so it’ll be arriving with some heavy legs for this game.
No morning skate for the Stars since they were on the road last night, so here was the lineup from that Buffalo game. A change in net is anticipated, so expect Oettinger to be in goal against the Hawks.
Stars warmup lines vs Buffalo: Steel – Johnston – Rantanen Robertson – Hintz – Bourque Hryckowian – Duchene – Benn Bäck – Faksa – Blackwell Lindell – Heiskanen Harley – Lundkvist Lyubushkin – Petrovic DeSmith Oettinger
— Sam Nestler (@samnestler.bsky.social) December 31, 2025 at 6:35 PM
As for the Hawks, they followed up that win over Dallas with a subpar performance against the Penguins the following night — largely undone by a rare off night from Spencer Knight — and then put in a solid effort that earned a point against the Islanders on Tuesday. The Blackhawks are certainly not thriving with their top two offensive talents still out with injury but there have been better collective efforts in the last week or two. The good news for this game is that it’s not the tail end of a back-to-back, which have been unmitigated disasters for the Hawks this season, including the aforementioned 7-3 loss to the Penguins just four nights ago. But they’ll need as good of an effort as they can muster against a Dallas team that will not have forgotten what happened when these two teams met within the last week.
Here was the Hawks lineup at the morning skate:
Blackhawks lines in morning skate vs Stars are the same as Tuesday:
— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) January 1, 2026
Bertuzzi-Greene-Burakovsky
Donato-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Teravainen-Moore-Lardis
Foligno-Dach-Slaggert
Vlasic-Crevier
Kaiser-Levshunov
Grzelcyk-Murphy
Knight
Let’s go Hawks.
Tale of the Tape
Blackhawks — Statistic — Stars
47.08% (26th) — 5-on-5 Corsi For — 45.44% (31st)
44.67% (31st) — 5-on-5 Expected goals for — 48.61% (22nd)
2.74 (26th) — Goals per game — 3.43 (2nd)
3.18 (18th) — Goals against per game — 2.65 (t-5th)
46.4% (t-30th) — Faceoffs — 52.1% (t-5th)
20.0% (12th) — Power play — 30.1% (t-2nd)
83.6% (5th) — Penalty kill — 83.2% (6th)
(All stats from this season)
How to watch
When: 7:30 p.m. CT
Where: United Center, Chicago
TV: CHSN
Webstream: ESPN+
Radio: WGN 720