The Washington Capitals may have dropped two games at home to allow the Tampa Bay Lightning to even the Eastern Conference Final at two games apiece, but a 7-1 road record this postseason will allow for some confidence as the series becomes a best-of-three.
“There’s nothing we can do. We’re not going to look back, we’re just going to look forward,” said Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin. “This group of guys have been in different situations all year and we fight through it. It’s a huge test. We’re still going to have fun, we’re still going to enjoy it. We’ll see what happens. We’re going to Tampa to play our game, try to get a victory and come back home.”
Head coach Barry Trotz used the word “resilient” several times in his post-Game 4 press conference to describe his team, and it’s appropriate They dropped the first two games to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the first round only to reel off four straight wins. They dropped Game 1 against the Pittsburgh Penguins after blowing a third period lead, then allowed their opponent to tie the series at two before winning Games 5 and 6 to advance. Now they wasted a strong start to the conference final and have given the Lightning a lifeline, even as they dominated at even strength through four games.
“We know how we have to play,” Trotz said afterward. “We’ve played well in three of four games; we played one stinker. We’re comfortable going on the road. We would have loved to have gotten this one tonight. We didn’t. We’re going to go to Tampa, and our intention is to go win a game in Tampa. We’ve already done it twice.”
[Lightning survive barrage to even series with Capitals]
Two dominant road victories already in this series won’t allow the Capitals’ confidence to wane or for old memories of previous playoff choke jobs to creep into their heads just yet. It’s about replicating their success in Games 1 and 2 while trying to be smarter about discipline (Hey, Lars Eller!) and not allow a Tampa power play that’s capitalized 42.9 percent in this series to continue winning that battle.
A lot of the credit for Tampa’s two wins in D.C. can go to goaltender Andrei Vasilevskiy, who stopped 36 shots in both victories and allowed only four goals. Some of those chances were of the high-danger variety, but the Capitals couldn’t find the back of the net.
“He didn’t play great in the first two. He played well in the second two,” said Tom Wilson about Vasilevskiy’s play. “It’s our job to make him look more like the goalie the first couple of games. We’ll keep going to the net. We’ll make it hard on him. Hopefully the bounces will go in.”
“We had pretty good chances. We just [didn’t] execute,” added Ovechkin.
The old saying goes it’s not a series until a team loses at home. Well, the home team hasn’t had any luck in this conference final, but you have to imagine at some point over the course of these final three games a breakthrough will occur. In the meantime, the Capitals will look to continue to the home-ice non-advantage trend Saturday night in Game 5 (7:15 p.m. ET, NBC, live stream) at AMALIE Arena.
“Nothing’s come easy for this team,” said Trotz.
MORE:
• Conference Finals schedule, TV info
• NBC’s Stanley Cup Playoff Hub
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Sean Leahy is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports. Drop him a line at phtblog@nbcsports.com or follow him on Twitter @Sean_Leahy.