The Dallas Stars will stick with revamped bottom-three forward lines when they try to even the Western Conference First Round against the Calgary Flames at Scotiabank Saddledome on Thursday.
The top line of left wing Jason Robertson, center Roope Hintz and right wing Joe Pavelski will remain intact.
Left wing Michael Raffl moves from fourth line to the second, joining center Jamie Benn and right wing Denis Gurianov, who was on the third line in Game 1. Vladislav Namestnikov moves from second-line center to third-line left wing alongside center Tyler Seguin, who moves from the second line, and right wing Luke Glendening, up from the fourth line, which will be comprised of left wing Joel Kiviranta, center Radek Faksa and right wing Alexander Radulov.
The Stars used these reconfigured lines in the second and third periods of their 1-0 loss to the Flames in Game 1.
"There's balance there, there's responsible players defensively on all three of those line and balances out a little bit," Dallas coach Rick Bowness said. "Clearly, we need to generate some more offense from those guys as well, but we've got workers and checkers on every line for balance."
Forward Elias Lindholm scored a power-play goal for the game's only offense in Game 1. Goalie Jacob Markstrom made 16 saves for his second career NHL postseason shutout.
Calgary would be fine with this ending up a series of low-scoring games.
"That's the good thing about our team. I feel like we can play any style, whether it's big and physical, high scoring, low scoring," Flames forward Matthew Tkachuk said. "We've had a few 1-0 games this year. We've had a few nine-goal games and everything in between. Anything comes, we'll be ready for it."
Teams that take a 2-0 lead in a best-of-7 NHL playoff series hold an all-time record of 337-52 (86.6 percent).
Here are 3 keys for Game 2:
