Posted at 10:00 AM EST. Odds subject to change.

Pinnacle  -104 BET365  -110 Sportsinteraction  -110 888Sport  -110

Vegas -104 over Dallas

10:37 PM EST. OT included. The Stars' heads have to be spinning after dropping the first two games of this series at home in Dallas as the #1 seed in the Western Conference, and if you were to listen to head coach Peter DeBoer, he doesn’t quite have the confidence he did after Game 1: "I think we're a confident group. We're obviously not in a great spot, but we're also a veteran group and understand if you win one game, things change. Pressure points change, attitudes change, so that's our focus.” As for the current deficit the Stars are facing, DeBoer says, "It's big, but you can't feel sorry for yourself.” Stars forward Tyler Seguin said much the same, but focused on what had to be done tonight: "You've got to start with one (win).”

With that, do the Stars sound like world-beaters or a team that racked up 113 points this season, or do they sound like a team that barely squeaked in and was getting dominated as expected? We lean to the latter, as the Golden Knights are totally in the Stars’ heads, just ask Jason Robertson: "They're the defending Cup champs for a reason. They know how to squeeze it out and finish a game off. It's going to be a grind (to come back in the series), but everyone in here is going to be confident and ready to go.” Perhaps we’re overanalyzing, but the coach mentions he “thinks” the Stars are a confident group, while Robertson says Dallas “is going to be” confident. Is there a confidence switch we don’t know about, and if so, why have the Stars waiting this long to flip it?

Last season, the Stars were in a similar spot in the Western Conference finals in which they came into Game 3 down 0-2, and they responded at that time with a clunker that saw them lose 4-0 to go down in that series 3-0. Dallas would win the next two, but finally fall to Vegas in six games. While there are many red flags for the Stars in advance of Game 3, we cannot ignore the fact that Vegas has not played all that well, and yet they are still in control of this series. The Fortress is never an easy place to play and with the Knights up 2-0, that rink is going to be rocking. Just how are the Stars going to overcome the pressure on them to get off to a good start, as Vegas did in Game 2, and take the crowd out of it?

If the Stars were gripping their sticks in Game 2, they are likely coming into this game tonight with their hands loaded with splinters, and if they are able to overcome the adversity and the atmosphere, so be it, but the Golden Knights cannot be a coin flip in this spot. They’ve beaten the Stars six times in a row, and ended their season last spring and they’ve not let Dallas breathe in this series. If the Golden Knights let up here and the Stars are able to steal a game, so be it, but a coin flip this is not. Wrong side favored.

Sherwood

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