Next up: Sens-Pens in East final
Capitals fail to make it to Round 3 again
Iin Washington f the Ottawa Senators are going to get to the Stanley Cup Final, it will be through the front door of the defending champs. Just as it should be, right? Backed by the acrobatic and once forgotten MarcAndre Fleury, the Pittsburgh Penguins did what t hey usually do — eliminate the Washington Capitals.
Their 2- 0 victory at Verizon Center improved the Penguins r ecord to 4- 0 against the Capitals in Game 7s and 9-1 in all-time playoff series against Washington.
The Penguins will now host the Senators in an Eastern Conference final that will start Saturday in Pittsburgh.
The Senators and Penguins have met four times in post-season play. The Senators won the first set in five games, in 2007, but then lost the next three, starting with a sweep in 2008 and including 2010 ( six games) and 2013 (five games).
The Senators were 2-1- 0 in their season series with the Penguins this year.
The Capitals have not made it past the second round of the playoffs since going to the finals in 1998. Surely, significant changes will be made to a team that cruised to the Presidents’ Trophy with a 55-19-8 record.
That might even include Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin, the only player on his team to have a minus-2 beside his name on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Bryan Rust and Patric Hornqvist scored the Penguins goals, while Fleury made 29 saves for his ninth career playoff shutout.
Relegated to backup duties when Matt Murray led the Penguins to their Cup win last spring, Fleury took over between the pipes when Murray suffered an undisclosed injury during the warm- up of the Penguins first playoff game this spring.
On Wednesday, Murray suited up from the first time since then to serve as the Penguins back up.
Braden Holtby made 26 saves in the Capitals net.
Rust, who had a hat trick in an 8- 5 win over the Senators in December, scored his sixth goal of the playoffs to break a scoreless tie at 8:49 of the second period.
The Capitals had a chance to clear the zone but the puck was kept in at the blue line and moved in to Sidney Crosby. He slid a pass to Jake Guentzel, who held on for a second before feeding Rust. His quick shot beat Holtby over the left shoulder.
Fleury stood firm in the second period, stopping all 15 shots he faced. Early on he victimized Lars Eller, who was left alone to take a couple of whacks at the puck. But his best save of the period was off Ovechkin, who one- timed a shot from the slot and started to raise his arms to signal a goal before he realized Fleury had deflected it into the crowd’s protecting mesh.
Ovechkin stared in disbelief.
Hornqvist put the Penguins up by a pair at the 4:14 mark of the third, right after Ovechkin failed to bear down to get the puck out at the blue line. Hornqvist’s fourth of the postseason was a perfect backhand that went through the legs of Capitals defenceman Nate Schmidt and off the bar past Holtby’s catching mitt.
The Verizon Center was a sea of red as fans jammed into the arena and made a whole lot of noise right from the singing of the Star Spangled Banner. The home team clearly received a boost. It looked like the Capitals played the first two minutes of the game with a power play. The Penguins couldn’t get out of their own zone because they were barely allowed to touch the puck.
The tide turned, however, after the Penguins tested Holtby for the first time with a long range effort at the 3:47 mark. It was the first of seven unanswered shots on goal for the Penguins, who wound up with a 10-8 edge in the scoreless period.