Well the Caps got past the New York Rangers in what was a tough 5 game series. Up next there southeast division counterpart the Tampa Bay Lighting. The Bolts came back from 3-1 deficit to beat the Crosbyless Shittsburgh Penguins in 7 games. The Caps won the regular season series 4-2 and the Caps outscored the Bolts 18 to 10. This could be the start of a long rivalry in the southeast division. Ovechkin vs Stamkos is a sexy headline to hockey fans and Boudreau has called out Stamkos and Steve Downie for flopping to much. Trash talk and a playoff series sounds like the perfect mixture for a rivalry. Here's my keys to this series.
Facing a Real Offense: Yes it was a great defensive performance against the Rangers, yes it was great that the pk only gave up one goal, but outside of Marion Gaborik the Rangers have no offensive weapons what so ever. Against the Lighting the Caps defense will have to worry about more than one offensive threat. The Bolts have Vincent Lecavalier and Martin St Louis who have both won a cup and oh yea they have the up and coming talent in Steven Stamkos. St Louis is 3rd in the league with playoff points with 4 goals and 4 assists. The Caps defense has done a good job at times during the regular season against the Bolts offense as they did shut Tampa out 6-0. Tampa's offense likes to work the puck in deep then throw a centering pass into the slot. Sounds easy to defend but if the defense does not stay at home the centering passes can cause confusion in the Caps defensive zone.
Old vs Young: The Caps and Lighting feature two different goaltenders. The Caps have Michael Neuvirth who is only 23 year old and Tampa has Dwayne Roloson who is 41. Nuvie, in the playoffs, has a GAA of 1.38 and a save percentage of .946%. Not to be out done Roloson has a GAA of 1.77 and is leading the playoffs in save percentage with .949%. Without Neuvirth, the Caps would not have beaten the Rangers in 5 games and without Roloson Tampa maybe on the golf course right now. The goalie that remains hot, that team has the best chance of winning this series with the offensive power both of these teams have and both of the goalies will be seeing a lot of shots on goal.
Support From the Third Lines: Another reason for both of the teams success is the support from there role players. The Caps have gotten contributions from Jason Chimera and Swedish center Marcus Johanson. While the Lightning have received help from Sean Bergenhim and Simone Gange. When teams get help from there role players that takes the pressure off of the teams stars and it also puts pressure on the opposing team's coach to choose which defensive line he should send out. When its just a team's top line scoring coaches know to put there top dmen on them, but if you have multiple lines scoring that makes the decision a little bit harder on who to send out. Ovechkin and Stamkos don't have to do everything since they know they can rely on there teammates for scoring help and that'll relax and Ovie and Stamkos also; and from my experience you play better when you're relaxed. If one of the team's third line goes cold expect that team's scoring to drop and expect that team to struggle in this series.
Expect a lot goals coming from this series. I won't be surprised if a regular score is 5-4, 4-3 on nightly basis. From the Caps perspective I would like to see Nicklas Backstrom start scoring more as he only has 1 assist in this year's playoffs. If Backstrom can finally get going that will be a deadly first line for the rest of the playoffs. If this was last year's team I could see this series going 7 games, but the Caps finally learned how to play defense and will hopefully stick to that philosphy for this series to shut down Tampa's scorers. Even thought Tampa has Lecavalier and St Louis, who have cups, I still think this is a young team and they don't have the defensive fire power to shut down Ovie and company. Give me the Caps in 6 games. LETS GO CAPS!!!!
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