Finally, an actual opponent. The Caps found out on Wednesday night they will face the Tampa Bay Lighting in the Eastern Conference semifinals. The series begins at 7 p.m. on Friday night at Verizon Center. Washington will have gone six days between games. The Lighting will have had less than 48 hours rest.
“You never know. Sometimes maybe too much rest can not be good,” Caps defenseman Mike Green said. “But we’ve tried to stay focused and prepared here and hopefully, maybe they’re a little emotionally drained from the battle they’ve been through. But we don’t expect anything less from them. They’re pretty fired up. So we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”
A brief power outage interrupted the proceedings for about 10 minutes before the Caps got back to work. Injured forward Mike Knuble (undisclosed) and defenseman Dennis Wideman (right leg hematoma) both skated with the reserves in the secondary rink at Kettler. Tom Poti (groin) didn’t skate at all.
Otherwise, everyone was on the ice at practice on Thursday for a special-teams heavy practice. Lines remained the same as the final few games against New York: Ovechkin-Backstrom-Laich (red); Sturm-Arnott-Semin (grey); Chimera-Johansson-Fehr (green); Hendricks-Gordon-Bradley-Beagle (white). The eight healthy defensemen were all on the ice, too.
Caps went 4-1-1 against Tampa Bay during the regular season, including a pair of six-goal performances in November. But don’t let that fool you. The final four were all battles featuring intriguing tactical decisions by the coaching staffs as the two fought for the Southeast Division lead.
“It got pretty good there at the end, I think the rivalry,” Caps coach Bruce Boudreau said. “Just because both teams were vying for first place and I think the last four games we had against them were pretty serious, serious games. But I think this takes it a different step.”
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