Game 6 Open Thread: Colorado Avalanche vs. Dallas Stars (7:30 p.m. MT)

It’s another Colorado Avalanche playoff game!

It all comes down to this. The Colorado Avalanche take on the Dallas Stars in a pivotal game six tonight, as they try to stay alive in this series and stave off elimination.

Colorado Avalanche

Colorado comes into this game needing a win to stay alive in this playoff series, as they lost game five and subsequently fell down 2-3 in the series. Getting that win will be far easier said than done, though, of course, as this Stars team will be looking to close out the series tonight. The Avs have shown that they’re certainly capable of beating Dallas; they actually have to show up tonight and play like they know they can, and nothing like they did in game five.

Projected Lineup

Artturi Lehkonen – Nathan MacKinnon – Martin Necas
Gabriel Landeskog – Brock Nelson – Valeri Nichushkin
Jonathan Drouin – Charlie Coyle – Joel Kiviranta
Parker Kelly – Jack Drury – Logan O’Connor

Devon Toews – Cale Makar
Ryan Lindgren – Josh Manson
Samuel Girard – Sam Malinski

Dallas Stars

After getting shutout in game four, Dallas showed up and showed out in game five to go up 3-2 in the series. Tonight, as previously mentioned, they’ll look to close out the series and move on to the second round. They’ll be without Miro Heiskanen once again tonight, which hasn’t been a very big problem for them thus far. It’s still something that Colorado can exploit, but that is far easier said than done. We’ll see if they can replicate their play from Game 5 to tonight’s game.

Projected Lineup

Mikael Granlund – Roope Hintz – Mikko Rantanen
Mason Marchment – Matt Duchene – Tyler Seguin
Jamie Benn – Wyatt Johnston – Evgenii Dadonov
Oskar Back – Sam Steel – Colin Blackwell

Esa Lindell – Cody Ceci
Thomas Harley – Ilya Lyubushkin
Lian Bichsel – Alex Petrovic

Goaltenders

As we’ve seen in every game in this series so far, it should be Mackenzie Blackwood going in net tonight for the Avs against Jake Oettinger. While Blackwood didn’t have a stellar game five performance by any means, he’s been great throughout this series overall. On top of that, a handful of those Dallas goals in game five were insanely lucky, so it’s hard to be incredibly upset at him for that. Hopefully, he’s able to find his form that he’s had for the entirety of this series, outside of game five here tonight.