Montreal arrives in Dallas with three straight road wins and only two goals allowed across them. That’s an encouraging run, but Thursday’s matchup asks more of the Canadiens than simply carrying that record forward. Jacob Fowler’s 46-save shutout delivered the latest victory; Jakub Dobes is Montreal’s confirmed starter for this game, with a very different recent record. For a Montreal underdog, the distinction matters as much as the winning streak.
The win was real—and so was the pressure
Fowler stopped all 46 St. Louis shots in Tuesday’s 2-0 victory, including 24 in the third period. Zachary Bolduc and Florian Xhekaj scored, and Mike Matheson assisted on both goals. The Canadiens followed wins of 4-1 at Chicago and 2-1 at Winnipeg with another successful night away from home.
Those results show Montreal can win without piling up goals. They also make it important to separate the scoreboard from the demands placed on its goalie. A repeat of Tuesday’s workload would ask a lot of Dobes: across his five most recent completed appearances for Montreal this season, he allowed 22 goals on 144 shots, a .847 save percentage.
That five-game sample isn’t his whole season or a forecast for Thursday. It does, however, give readers a reason to look beyond Montreal’s latest defensive results when weighing the matchup.
Dallas has its own recovery to make
The Stars’ five-game winning streak ended with a 5-1 loss to New Jersey on Tuesday. Dallas managed only 17 shots, and Casey DeSmith allowed the five goals. The Stars also killed all three Devils power plays, extending their successful penalty-kill run to 22 across six games. The loss exposed more than one problem, but Dallas’s penalty killing wasn’t the source of the damage that night.
Jake Oettinger is the expected Dallas goalie for this matchup, though he is not confirmed to start. He allowed 10 goals on 103 shots across his latest five completed appearances, a .903 save percentage. Neither Tuesday’s Dallas result nor Montreal’s shutout should be assigned wholesale to the goalies involved here.
DraftKings makes Dallas a -162 favorite, with Montreal at +136. The Stars have won seven of their last 10 games, compared with six for Montreal, all within this season. Our projections also put their shot output close together, at roughly 26 for Dallas and 25 for Montreal. That leaves little projected volume separation to explain away the importance of the goalie comparison.
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A familiar total, with competing signals
The posted total is 5.5. Dallas games have gone Under in 10 of 12 this season, returning a historical profit of 6.77 units from flat one-unit Under bets at those historical totals. But the Stars’ last two games both went Over their 5.5 totals: a 6-3 win over the Islanders and the 5-1 loss to New Jersey.
Montreal’s recent low-scoring wins add a restraint, while Dobes’s five-appearance results challenge the idea that the Canadiens’ latest goals-against numbers will carry straight into this game. Seven of their 12 games this season went Over their respective totals. Dallas’s penalty killing offers another obstacle to scoring, but its own one-goal, 17-shot outing leaves an offensive recovery to demonstrate too.
The most useful distinction is between a successful team run and the performance needed to sustain it. Montreal has earned its three wins; Thursday asks Dobes and the skaters in front of him to support that progress against a priced-up Dallas team. Evaluate the underdog and the total with that change in mind, rather than treating either recent result as a template.
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