Matt Nieto will play in his first ever Stanley Cup Final game tonight. Friend of the Blog Kevin Kurz reported the move, which will put Nieto on the third line in place of Melker Karlsson.
Karlsson moves down to the fourth line and, unsurprisingly, Dainius Zubrus ends up in the press box when it’s all said and done. I’ll leave the dead horse alone, but while it’s nice to see Nieto in the game it’s a shame it’s at the expense of Zubrus. Patrick Marleau stays on the second line — we’ll see if that lasts throughout the game.
Speaking of, Bryan Rust is questionable for tonight’s game. I doubt we’ll find out if he’s playing until minutes before the contest, so for now we’ll operate under the assumption that he’s good to go. Here are tonight’s projected lines.
Projected Sharks Lines
Tomas Hertl – Joe Thornton – Joe Pavelski
Patrick Marleau – Logan Couture – Joonas Donskoi
Matt Nieto – Chris Tierney – Joel Ward
Melker Karlsson – Nick Spaling – Tommy Wingels
Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Paul Martin – Brent Burns
Brenden Dillon – Roman Polak
Martin Jones
James Reimer
Projected Penguins Lines
Conor Sheary – Sidney Crosby – Patric Hornqvist
Carl Hagelin – Nick Bonino – Phil Kessel
Chris Kunitz – Evgeni Malkin – Bryan Rust
Tom Kuhnhackl – Matt Cullen – Eric Fehr
Brian Dumoulin – Kris Letang
Olli Maatta – Ben Lovejoy
Ian Cole – Justin Schultz
Matt Murray
Marc-Andre Fleury
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