Game 3 lineup notes

Projected Lines – Los Angeles

Dustin Brown – Anze Kopitar – Justin Williams
Dwight King – Mike Richards – Jeff Carter
Dustin Penner – Trevor Lewis – Tyler Toffoli
Tanner Pearson – Colin Fraser – Brad Richardson

Robyn Regehr – Drew Doughty
Rob Scuderi – Slava Voynov
Jake Muzzin – Keaton Ellerby

Jonathan Quick
Jonathan Bernier

-Kyle Clifford and Jarret Stoll will not play due to injury. Tanner Pearson appears set to make his NHL debut in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, replacing Jordan Nolan. Keaton Ellerby is likely to draw into the lineup for Alec Martinez, who was a minus-3 and took two minor penalties in Game 2. Ellerby played in the first four games of the St. Louis series, though he earned more than 10 minutes solely in Game 1. He was used primarily as a penalty-killing defender as the team switched to seven defensemen for Game 3. Versatile Brad Richardson, who was effective in Jarret Stoll’s absence, is likely to slot opposite Pearson on Colin Fraser’s line. More on potential lineup changes in Darryl Sutter’s morning skate quotes, which will follow shortly.

Projected Lines – San Jose

TJ Galiardi – Joe Thornton – Brent Burns
Patrick Marleau – Logan Couture – Joe Pavelski
Martin Havlat – Scott Gomez – Tommy Wingels
Andrew Desjardins – Tim Kennedy – James Sheppard

Matt Irwin – Dan Boyle
Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Justin Braun
Scott Hannan – Brad Stuart

Antti Niemi
Thomas Greiss

-Martin Havlat will make his series debut. He suffered a groin injury in the first period of Game 1 of San Jose’s sweep of Vancouver and has been dogged by injury issues in his two years with the Sharks. In 40 regular season games, the talented skater has recorded eight goals, 18 points and a plus-7 rating. Havlat’s availability raises questions about the lines. Raffi Torres had been skating as the right wing with Marleau and Couture but is suspended for the remainder of the series. Joe Pavelski moved into Torres’ spot for Game 3, but could also rejoin the third line if Todd McLellan prefers to use Havlat as the second line right wing. Scott Gomez, who was effective in Game 2, had been skating as a fourth line center and could potentially return to that role should Pavelski return to third line center. In any case, either Tim Kennedy or Bracken Kearns will be out for Game 3. It is somewhat complicated. San Jose Mercury News Sharks beat writer has more on San Jose’s potential alignments here. Jason Demers remains doubtful with an ankle injury. Forward Adam Burish is out for the series with an upper-body injury.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.