Ducks at Stars Preview: Will The Injuries Ever End?

Keys to the Game: Last game time out against the Phoenix Coyotes was to say the least... brutal. The Desert Dogs played a very physical game and the Anaheim Ducks left the ice battered, bruised, and with even more names being added to the medical case log.

The entire team at this very moment, if the IR list was off to the left of the image. via www.ohmagif.com

The latest victim is yet another defenseman Bryan Allen.

BB said Bryan Allen (lower body) will not be with Ducks in Dallas. Did not practice today. Means Nolan Yonkman should make Ducks debut.

— Eric Stephens (@icemancometh) November 25, 2013

Let's hope a Cam Fowler-like regression isn't in his post-injury future.

And on that note let's hope Cam Fowler stays healthy because he's actually been playing decently lately and I like that. (Anti-jinxing note: all glory to the Hockey Gods, Hypnotoad, and the all-mighty Magumbo.)

This means the Ducks will be without four of their top defensemen as Francois Beauchemin, Sheldon Souray, and Luca Sbisa are all out of the lineup as well with injuries of their own.

And as Eric Stephens says, summer free agent signing Nolan Yonkman will make his Ducks debut. Yonkman hung around at training camp for quite a while and made a name for himself as a pretty pesty guy with his combination of size and willingness to use it.

That being said however, I don't think too many people were expecting him ever to see a game with the big club this year.

Key to this game: DO. NOT. GET. INJURED. JUST STAY HEALTHY.

What Can We Learn From this Game: The fact that the Ducks are still winning games with as many injuries as they have is nothing short of mind-boggling.

And now they're about to face a team who the Ducks looked a little shaky against in the first game of their season series, but rebounded from a bad first period to win comfortably 6-3.

The thing is since then Tyler Seguin has woke up and realized he's good at hockey. He now has 12 goals on the season and is second on the team in points. Second. The leader, Jamie Benn, has 24 points, just one fewer than Corey Perry and three behind Ryan Getzlaf. We all know how well those two guys are doing... well Dallas has a duo that's been lighting it up pretty well themselves.

Combine that with a pretty unfriendly building and Anaheim has a really tall task for them. Almost as tall as an average Texan's ego. Almost.

Remember that time we got the chance to say goodbye to the Dallas Stars as division rivals? Remember how horrendously wrong they spelled my name in doing so? Yeah that was fun.

Fearless Prediction: Ryan Getzlaf successfully manages to ruin Tyler Seguin's concentration by spoiling the latest episode of Teen Wolf for him, then pointing out every high school girl in the lower bowl. Nolan Yonkman follows up by knocking him unconscious and gets suspended from everything forever.

Because we're not allowed to have a defense anyway according to the universe.

Stay tuned here for updates throughout the day (lineup news, etc.) and start commenting. We'll have a quick stats pack shortly before puck drop for the in-game comments to flow.