The San Jose Sharks staved off elimination Thursday night. Now they have another opportunity to keep their second season going Sunday, but it will be no easy feat as their Stanley Cup playoff first-round series with the Golden Knights returns to Las Vegas for Game 6.
Team Teal put on a magnificent performance in Game 5, holding off the rival Knights and pulling out a 5-2 victory. Tomas Hertl found the back of the net twice, Barclay Goodrow scored his first playoff goal, and Martin Jones turned away 30 of 32 shots as San Jose forced the series to go to a sixth game.
San Jose has lost the previous two games of the series in Las Vegas, getting outscored by the Golden Knights 11-3. According to StatsPass, the Sharks are 12-23-0 all time in playoff games played Sunday.
Here are the teams' projected lines and defensive pairings for Game 6:
Sharks projected lines and pairs
Timo Meier – Logan Couture – Joe Pavelski
Evander Kane – Tomas Hertl – Gustav Nyquist
Marcus Sorensen – Joe Thornton – Kevin Labanc
Joonas Donskoi – Barclay Goodrow – Melker Karlsson
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Marc-Edouard Vlasic – Brent Burns
Brenden Dillon – Erik Karlsson
Joakim Ryan – Justin Braun
Martin Jones – projected starter
Aaron Dell
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Golden Knights projected lines and pairs
Jonathan Marchessault – William Karlsson – Reilly Smith
Max Pacioretty – Paul Stastny – Mark Stone
Tomas Nosek – Cody Eakin – Alex Tuch
Will Carrier – Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – Ryan Reaves
Nate Schmidt – Deryk Engelland
Brayden McNabb – Shea Theodore
Jon Merrill – Colin Miller
Marc-Andre Fleury – projected starter
Malcom Subban
