Home-ice advantage? Maybe not

WASHINGTON — The good news for Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals is they still lead their Eastern Conference final against the Tampa Bay Lightning. The bad news for the Capitals, counterintuitive as it may be: they host Game 4.

So far, Washington is 7-1 in away games this post-season, closing out each of its first two series on the road.

Heading into tonight, the Capitals are only 3-4 in their arena. The latest setback was a 4-2 loss to the Lightning on Tuesday, after victories at Tampa Bay by a combined score of 10-4 in the final’s opening two games.

Ovechkin simply shrugged when asked about that discrepancy. “We don’t think about it,” the three-time NHL MVP said. “We just play our game.” Others were less dismissive. “We can take a few things that we’ve done on the road and put it into our home game,” goalie Braden Holtby said. “Just a little simpler. Simpler play. Just a kind of, like, more gritty style.”

Asked what his club could do to fare better at home, Capitals coach Barry Trotz said: “Just play the way we do on the road. We’re invested there. We’re playing with real good focus. I didn’t think we were as focused as we have been normally on the road. So just pretend you’re on the road. All the buildings are pretty well the same these days.”

Trotz notices a difference in his players’ attitude on home ice, saying: “It’s ‘us against the world’ when were on the road.”

There is a league-wide trend here: road teams are 38-34 in these playoffs.

So much for any supposed home-ice advantage, right?

“For whatever reason, at this time of the year there are more distractions than in the regular season, for sure. A lot of people have friends and family coming down and ticket requests. Sometimes there’s that little added pressure of playing at home and wanting to obviously do good things in front of your fans,” Lightning forward Steven Stamkos said. “There’s something to be said, too, (for) winning games on the road, when you can just kind of hear a pin drop in the crowd, sometimes, which is always a good thing.” Holtby agreed.

“It’s easier to play on the road. It’s always that way on the road. Any team would say that,” he said. “Because you’re not focused on the excitement of your fans and all that. They bring you energy in good ways, but at the same time, you need to stay realistic and play your game.”