Live conversation for a must-win Game 6

This is it folks.  The New York Rangers must in this game to extend their season and bring the series back to New York. They’ve been in this situation before in these playoffs, but it never seemed as desperate.

The Blueshirts are down only three games to two, but they are riding a three game losing streak and are going into the lion’s den, the Amalie Arena. They are going to attempt to do win two games in a row against the defending champs, something only accomplished by one team over Tampa’s last 11 playoff series.  Oh yes, it was the Rangers who were that team so they are trying to do it twice in the same series.

Despite the series deficit, the Rangers have been in every game in this series except one. They have won two games and they were seconds away from overtime in two of their losses.

The Lightning know they have to win tonight with a Game Seven at Madison Square Garden a dangerous challenge.  They will be using all of their playoff experience as they try to end this series.

Projected starting lineups

There should be no changes in the personnel suiting up for this game, but Coach Gerard Gallant hinted at some potential line changes. There was some speculation that Kaapo Kakko could be scratched in favor of Dryden Hunt.  That would be combined with a new first line made up of Mika Zibanejad, Chris Kreider and Artemi Panarin.

NEW YORK RANGERS

20 Kreider – 93 Zibanejad – 77 Vatrano
10 Panarin – 16 Strome – 18 Copp
13 Lafreniere -72 Chytil  – 24 Kakko
64 Motte  – 21 Goodrow – 75 Reaves

55 Lindgren  – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 8  Trouba
61 Braun – 54  Schneider

31 Shesterkin
40  Georgiev

TAMPA BAY LIGHTNING

18 Ondrej Palat -91 Steven Stamkos – – 86 Nikita Kucherov
38 Brandon Hagel -71 Anthony Cirelli  – 17 Alex Killorn
79  Ross Colton – 20 Nicholas Paul – 10 Corey Perry
14 Pat Maroon – 41 Pierre-Edouard Bellemare – 16 Riley Nash

77 Victor Hedman -44 Jan Rutta
27 Ryan McDonagh – 81 Erik Cernak
98 Mikhail Sergachev -24 Zach Bogosian

88 Andrei Vasilevskiy
1 Brian Elliott

How to watch and the live conversation

The game starts at 8pm and it will be televised on ESPN.  The live stream will be on ESPN+.  As usual, MSG Network will have a full pregame show at 7:30pm and an hourlong postgame show as soon as the game ends.

Blue Line Station’s live conversation is active now.  You can join the chat in the comments section below.  We have had some issues with the auto-refresh feature and the workaround is to sort the messages by oldest, then back to newest in order to see the latest comments.