Washington to face upstart Golden Knights for the Cup
Washington dominates Tampa, advances to face Golden Knights for the Stanley Cup
Jon Cooper was talking about the game, but really he was talking about all of us, and how we grow up watching and playing hockey — whether in a rink, on the road or on a pond — and living for moments like this.
Game 7. Winner goes to the Stanley Cup final.
As the Tampa Bay Lightning head coach said: “You’re writing history.”
Well, Alex Ovechkin certainly did.
For the first 12 years of his NHL career, the Washington Capitals forward was known more for what he didn’t do in the playoffs than what he did. He didn’t advance past the second round. He didn’t win a head-tohead battle with Sidney Crosby. He didn’t win a Stanley Cup. He didn’t even get close. After Wednesday night’s 4-0 win against the Lightning in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final, where he scored the game’s first goal 62 seconds after the puck dropped, he has a chance to correct that last part.
Yes, the Capitals are going to the Stanley Cup final, where they will play the Vegas Golden Knights. And it’s mostly because of Ovechkin.
Andre Burakovsky scored his first two goals of the playoffs and Braden Holtby stopped all 28 shots he faced for back-to-back shutouts, but the win belonged to Ovechkin.
The series did, too.
With 12 goals and 22 points in 19 playoff games — including four goals and seven points in the conference final — only Evgeny Kuznetsov scored more. But it wasn’t the offence that stood out with Ovechkin’s game. Even when Ovechkin wasn’t scoring, he was influencing the game, whether it was a hit or a backcheck or a blocked shot.
Ovechkin, who had been criticized for his leadership, has led the Capitals this year.
In some ways, his run to the Stanley Cup is as unlikely as Vegas’. No one saw this coming when the playoffs began. Not with Washington starting its backup goalie for games 1 and 2 and the Capitals relying on as many as five rookies.
And yet, for whatever reason, this team has defied the odds and exceeded expectations.
They survived a first-round scare against the Columbus Blue Jackets, finally exorcised their demons against Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins in the second round, and in the end were too much for the Lightning to handle.
They deserve to be in the final, where they will play a Golden Knights team that has gone 12-3 in the playoffs and defeated Washington in their two games in the regular season.
The Eastern Conference final had been a back-and-forth affair, with Washington winning the first two games, Tampa Bay winning the next three and Washington forcing Game 7 with a home ice victory Monday.
Sensing the players might be feeling the pressure of a door-die game, Washington head coach Barry Trotz elicited more than a few laughs when Ovechkin asked him to perform the “hot
It was a bit of a slow lap but you’re all in. They call your number, you step up to the plate.
BARRY TROTZ, Washington Capitals head coach, on taking a ‘hot lap’
lap” — a morning skate tradition of sprinting around the ice by yourself — on Wednesday.
“It was a bit of a slow lap, but you’re all in,” Trotz said. “They call your number, you step up to the plate.”
Once the game started, it was Ovechkin who once again stepped up.
The period had just begun when Tom Wilson created a turnover with a hit on Chris Kunitz and then charged up the ice on an odd-man rush. The puck went to Kuznetsov, but the main target was Ovechkin, whose stick was already cocked and ready for a one-timer that he rocketed into the top corner with 62 seconds off the clock.
The Capitals then got two goals in the second period from an unlikely source to make it 3-0.
Burakovsky had missed most of the first two rounds with an injury and had sat out Game 5 because of his lack of production. But midway through the second period, he used his speed to strip defenceman Dan Girardi of the puck and then beat Lightning goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy with a quick snapshot underneath his blocker.
Then, with 3:29 remaining in the period, Burakovsky took advantage of a bad line change and snuck a wrist shot through Vasilevskiy’s pads on a breakaway.
Nicklas Backstrom put the game out of reach late in the third period, but it was over well before then.
Tampa Bay, which had been shut out in Game 6, couldn’t score one, much less four or five. Not with the way Holtby had been playing lately.
The chances were there. But the Lightning, who last scored in the first minute of Game 5, couldn’t pull the trigger.
Victor Hedman deked around Holtby and put the puck on a tee for Yanni Gourde, but somehow he couldn’t shovel it the few inches needed to put it in the net.
The worst offenders were Tampa Bay’s star tandem of Steven Stamkos and Nikita Kucherov. They had combined for five goals and 12 points in the first four games, but went missing in the last three with just one powerplay goal and an assist.
It’s the type of history that no one wants written.