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Boudreau mulls line changes ahead of Game 7

Bruce Boudreau

Anaheim Ducks head coach Bruce Boudreau, center, talks out a play with Sheldon Souray (44) and Luca Sbisa (5) during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Dallas Stars Friday, Feb. 8, 2013, in Dallas. The Stars won 3-1. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

AP

Though he wouldn’t commit to anything, Ducks head coach Bruce Boudreau is contemplaing mixing up his bottom-six forward group for tomorrow’s Game 7 of the Western Conference Final against Chicago.

Right winger Kyle Palmieri -- who has spent most of this series on a line with Andrew Cogliano and Nate Thompson -- was replaced by Jiri Sekac on the third line, moving Palmieri onto the fourth with Rickard Rakell and Tomas Fleischmann. Fleischmann had taken the place of Emerson Etem on the bottom line, which has happened on a few occasions this postseason (including Game 5 of this series).

The moves were a chemistry test, according to Boudreau, who suggested he might use these new units as Anaheim looks to advance to the Stanley Cup Final for the first time in eight years.

“I wanted to see it in practice today,” Boudreau said, per NHL.com. “We tried that a little bit. I wanted to make sure that if that’s the route we’re going to go, then I wanted to see if they at least had sort of some good chemistry together. We talked about it and we’ll talk about it again [Saturday] morning.

“By no means are those set in stone, those lines today.”