TAMPA
Sam Hubbard Jersey Elite , Fla. — The Washington Capitals beat the Tampa Bay Lightning at their own game to open the Eastern Conference final.
Now Tampa Bay has to find a way to rediscover itself in Sunday’s Game 2 to avoid falling into a hole that might be too deep to climb out of in the quest to return to the Stanley Cup Final for the second time in four seasons.
Washington, meanwhile, looked like a team in control despite participating in the Eastern Conference final for the first time in the Alex Ovechkin era. The Capitals set the tone in the opening game of the best-of-seven series, which they will look to continue Sunday while once again expecting to be withou center Nicklas Backstrom. He has missed the past two games and remains day to day with a hand injury.
“I just think it’s been a real good commitment, attention to detail,” Washington coach Barry Trotz said. “All of those things. Just a team-wide commitment. I think we’re playing the full 200 feet that you need to play at playoff time and you’re getting the goaltending you need and you’re getting the commitment and you’re getting the work ethic and you’re getting the discipline and detail.
“All of those things combined, you have a chance every night if you do that.”
The Capitals, who haven’t been to a conference final since winning the Eastern Conference title in 1998, held the Lightning to 10 shots on goal through the first two periods as they controlled the game while building a four-goal lead.
“I think we just realized we just have to play our way,” said Ovechkin, who had a goal and an assist in Friday’s 4-2 victory. “It doesn’t matter which position we are
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The Capitals took the Lightning out of the game by not allowing Tampa Bay to utilize its speed on the forecheck, an area the Lightning were oftentimes dominant in the first two rounds against New Jersey and Boston. Instead, Washington slowed down the Tampa Bay attack through the neutral zone and when pucks got in deep the Capitals quickly transitioned the play up the ice.
“They turned pucks up quick, put pucks behind us and dictated the way the game was going to be played,” Lightning forward Chris Kunitz said. “That’s something that we had success doing to other teams. We have to raise our elevation of what we can do out there. But give them a lot of credit, they took Game 1 to us and we have to be better if we are going to be in the series.”
Tampa Bay has been in this situation before as recently as the last series, when it dropped Game 1 at home to Boston before winning four consecutive games to capture the series in five games. And since Jon Cooper has served as Lightning coach, Tampa Bay has dropped the first game of a series seven times in 11 tries. The Lightning went on to win four of those series, only losing the 2014 opening round series to Montreal and the 2015 Stanley Cup Final to Chicago.
In addition, the Lightning have won five consecutive Game 2s when losing the opening game.
“There’s no situation that we probably haven’t been in in the last couple years,” Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos said. “This is one we’ve been in before
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WINNIPEG, Manitoba — If you had put money down last fall on the Vegas Golden Knights to qualify for the playoffs, let alone the Stanley Cup Final, you would have run the risk of being committed to an insane asylum.
Well, prepare to be fitted for a straitjacket.
The first-year franchise stands on the precipice of representing the Western Conference in the battle for Lord Stanley’s cup after defeating the Winnipeg Jets 3-2 at home on Friday night to take a 3-1 stranglehold on the best-of-seven series.
The Golden Knights hope to punch their ticket against the Washington Capitals or the Tampa Bay Lightning by beating the Jets on Sunday afternoon at Bell MTS Place.
Since winning the series opener 4-2 last Saturday, the Jets have lost three straight games, something they haven’t done in more than a year.
The Golden Knights have made a habit of quashing the Jets’ momentum in each of the last three games by scoring within two shifts of Winnipeg tying the score, In fact, the momentum lasted a total of 143 seconds in all three games, including just 12 seconds in Game 3.
After the Jets outshot the Golden Knights 37-29 on Friday and utterly dominated the third period, Winnipeg coach Paul Maurice was far from despondent
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“We like a lot of things that we did. You know, stiff opponent, they don’t make it easy on you,” he said at his postgame press conference. “But the work level and the compete level was really good (from) start to finish. So that’s what you ask of your group, to come out and compete as hard as they can. There are always going to be things you think you can do better, move the puck a little cleaner. But you had 85 shot attempts. You’re playing in the right end of the rink.”
Vegas forward James Neal is eager to make up for last year’s shortcomings when he played for the Nashville Predators, who were defeated by Pittsburgh in the 2017 finals.
“We’re one win away, of course, but we have to keep battling,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “We can’t take our foot off the gas now. We have to continue to grow and get better, and we’ll do that.”
If necessary
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If the Golden Knights can win one of the next three games, they won’t be the first NHL expansion franchise to make the finals, but they’ll certainly be the most remarkable.
When the St. Louis Blues played the Montreal Canadiens in the spring of 1968, they represented the West Division, made up entirely of expansion franchises, so one first-year team was going to make it no matter what. The Blues were swept in four games.
And when the Toronto Arenas won the Cup in 1918, there were only four teams in the league at the start of the regular season and only three at the end, after the folding of the Montreal Wanderers after their rink burned down.
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