Ovechkin, Capitals to play for Cup
TAMPA, Fla. — Washington’s Alex Ovechkin lifted the Prince of Wales Trophy, spun around and set it back down on a table.
The rest of the Capitals joined him for a team photo after beating the Tampa Bay Lightning 4-0 on Wednesday night in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals, a victory that sends Washington to the Stanley Cup Finals for the first time in 20 years.
A decade of playoff frustration is fading fast.
“I think Ovie has been on a mission,” Washington head coach Barry Trotz said. “They wanted this game, no question.”
Ovechkin scored early and Andre Burakovsky added two second-period goals as the Caps continued to shed a label as postseason underachievers.
Braden Holtby stopped 29 shots for his second straight shutout and the Lightning, who led the NHL in goals during the regular season, failed to score in the last 159 minutes, 27 seconds of the series — a stretch of nearly eight periods.
“It’s going to take a few days to digest this. It’s tough to sit here right now and think of positive things and how it was a pretty great season,” Tampa Bay captain Steven Stamkos said. “It doesn’t seem that way when you have this group — and we’ve been to this position before — and you can’t find a way to give yourself a chance a win. We thought we had that group. It’s just an empty feeling right now.”
Ovechkin, who had not advanced beyond the second round, scored 1:02 into the winner-take-all matchup he had described as probably the “biggest game in my life.”
“The first goal was very important,” Ovechkin said. “After that, you could see we have all the momentum on our side. Holts was unstoppable today. He was special. Everybody was all in. Everybody was sacrificing their bodies. I think we all deserve the win.”
To earn a spot in the Stanley Cup Finals, in which they’ll play the Vegas Golden Knights, the Capitals beat the top-seeded Lightning three times on the road, improving to 8-2 away from home this postseason.
It’s Washington’s first Cup Finals appearance since 1998, and the first in Ovechkin’s 13year career.
“We played a great game,” defenseman John Carlson said. “We deserved to win this.”
Burakovsky became the 17th player to score a goal for Washington in the playoffs this year — four shy of the NHL record — when he beat Andrei Vasilevskiy on a breakaway at 8:59 of the second period.
The wing, who played two games in the first round against Columbus before sitting out 10 straight with an upper-body injury, added a breakaway goal to make it 3-0 heading into the final period.
Nicklas Backstrom had an empty-netter to complete the scoring.
“What a game. What an experience. We had a lot of guys pitching in,” wing T.J. Oshie said. “The biggest guy of all had to be Holts. He played fantastic, back-to-back shutouts.”
Tampa Bay, which rebounded from losing the first two games at home to take a 3-2 series lead, had plenty of chances. A couple of shots clanged off the post, Yanni Gourde was unable to get his stick on a loose puck in front on an empty net and the game gradually slipped away.
“We could have won every game,” Tampa Bay head coach Jon Cooper said. “We ran into a tough Washington team that was probably feeling the same thing, and once you get this far, you’ve probably done some magical things on the way.”