Lines Tonight per Russo

Interesting that they're trying Fiala and Kaprizov together. Should be fun to watch (and hopefully Kirill can take the monkey off his back tonight). I also love the 3rd line, glad Sturm is finally getting a shot at some bigger minutes

Yeah it’ll be interesting for sure. I’m curious to see if Seattle deliberately tries to get a matchup on them, and who. My gut take is that they’d try and send out Tanev-McCann-Bastian and play a rough shut down style on them. But that’s completely unfounded and just my own hunch.

We’ll finally see just how competitive that top line can be. And hopefully dominant

Moving from our other chat in your other post to this team chat. Honestly if I'm the SEA coach I'd be putting their best scoring line (no clue on SEA's lines tbh) against the Kaprizov line. Of the top-9 it's the line that can be taken advantage of the most in the d-zone. The Foligno and Sturm lines are too good at trapping the other team in their own d-zone. The 4th line I think gets very limited minutes.

I’m not positive, but this should be pretty close:

Schwartz - Gourde - Jarkrok
Donskoi - Wennberg - Eberle
Tanev - McCann - Bastian
Donato - Sheahan - Geekie

They’re def a more balanced, deep team, so they may just roll em, but I think what they’d want to avoid is their 1st paired against Greenway - Hartman - Foligno.

That doesn’t seem like a favorable matchup at all for Seattle. Undersized and could easily get stuck playing d all night. So you may be correct. Run their top against our 1st, and let the rest shake out.