The nerves had already begun firing 36 hours before the Capitals and Boston Bruins were scheduled to take the ice at TD Garden with their season on the line.
They will build gradually from Tuesday’s final practice through the comforting routine of a game day that is far from normal: A morning skate at the arena, a nap and a late afternoon arrival. Check the equipment — skates and sticks, gloves and helmets — and begin to loosen muscles. Watch one last video clip, go through warm-ups on the ice before a last chat with the coaching staff in the locker room. Then comes a night a player will remember — one way or another — for the rest of his career.
The two teams meet again on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Game 7 of an Eastern Conference quarterfinal. The winner will advance to the second round, one of eight teams left to fight for the Stanley Cup. The loser will lament all the missed opportunities in a series where the margin has been razor-thin in every category.
“You can’t say that one team has outclassed another team on any night,” Washington forward Mike Knuble said. “Very easily somebody could have swept it 4-0, somebody could have won it 4-1, 4-2. But here we are 3-3. It’s who is going to get that break at the end. It’s a big mystery. It’s almost more mysterious than anything. Who is going to get that break? Who is going to get the final bounce?”
The Caps rely on a rookie goalie who has only played in one Game ?7 in his life — and Braden Holtby lost that one as a junior hockey player. At the other end, Boston has veteran Tim Thomas, the most valuable player of last year’s postseason and backbone of the team that won the Stanley Cup. Still, Holtby, 22, thrives on routine.
“Just play another game,” said Holtby, who has a .935 save percentage in the series. “That’s when you read everything about who’s been successful in pressure situations. It’s bringing things down a little, treating it like every other game and doing the things that make you successful.”
It is the fifth time Washington has played a Game 7 since 2008 — all four of the previous ones at home and three of them losses. But the Caps have had success in Boston this season. They won both regular-season contests at TD Garden and have won there twice in this series, too. The only Bruins win was in overtime of Game 1 when Chris Kelly beat Holtby with a slap shot from the left wing. But none of that matters now.
“Before the game, you’re thinking about it all the time,” forward Alex Ovechkin said. “What do you have to do better? What do you do if you have a chance to score? What do you have to do if you have a chance to block [a shot] or hit somebody? But when you go to the ice, out there, the game is so quick, you just don’t think about this kind of stuff. You just concentrate on the game.”
